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CONTENTS 

Articles. wSg TSSsSIbSSSSs^S BSjjB^&ifejSpaBSj tSi Sgi SiBiSwBflB 

A Message to WESSEX by the Rt. Hon. Lord Forster of Lepe, P.C., G.C.M.G. 0 pp.~p.i- 
University College, Southampton, 1923-1930 ... ... ... -•• 1 

The New Richfield Rati (illustratedI ft5 £ s g 8cgS •...”. ft 

The First University Haii of Residence by K. H- Vickers, M.A., J.P. ... ... 9 

The House of the Valley Scholars by Albert A. Cock, B.A. ... ... ... 12 

Has Science Made Us Happier? by Sir Oliver .Lodge, F.R.S., D.Sc. ... 

Natural Science in the Secondary School by P. X Freeman, B.Sc., Ph.D. ... ... ; "21- 

Soutbampton: Some Aspects of its Growth and Prosperity by O. H. T. Rishbeth, 

M.A., F.R.G.S.2R 

The Piigrim Fathers ir« Southampton by E. S. Lyttel, M.A., F.L.S. ... 

Sir Berts of Hamtoun J. Crawfordy D Phil.. M.A. ... SsSnSssS ' _36 

Winchester—and the Reading of Books by Sir F. G: Kenyon, KC.B., D.Litt. ... _ 58 
With Hudson in Hampshire by J. W. Lindley ... ... ... ... ... hi 

William Barnes, The Dorset Poet, by V. de Sola Pinto, O. Phil,, M.A. ... ... 67 

Claudian by The Rev. R. Marlin Pope. M.A. . ... ... 33 

Adult Education in Wessex by A. Tomlinson, M.Sc. ... ... ... ... SO 

John Wesley Horrocks by The Rev. J. L. Beaumont James, M.A. ... ... 94 

Robert Bridges, 1844-1930, by V. de Sola Pinto ... ... ... ... 100 

Sonnet Competition: Adjudication by Laurence rlousman 103 

The Students’ Union by L. Nichols, B.A. ... ... ... ... ... 106 

Review. 

Speculum Keiigiouis WiIrion Cqrr. LL.D., D.Litt. ... 5Bg5 s§B6 10? 

Poems. 

The Kingdom of Heaven by R. A. Hodgson ... ... ... ... ... T4 

The Fountain by Pinto ... 20 

The Sidhe by R. A. Hodgsori^SsSSSj jjs^SSsjsjsSEsI ... ... 27 

The East Wind i. Trelawney Dayretl Reed ... ... ... "... ... 45 

Silchcsier bv Mary Sosj<S SiSj>iag)s9S35 ... 60 

A Strange Visit !••• A. Romney Green Sari ffil ... ... 65 

Verses !•• i>i lat< Dr. 1. W Horrocks ... ... ... ... ... 99 

Quaestio by A. Rorhney Green !SS&|SsS| ... . 104 

Words by Marv Hacker ... 105 

Write Me a Sonnet by Barbara Benington ... ... ... ... ... 105 

White ... ... ... 8gS3jgg5|gS SSSS® 

H.R.H. The Duchess of York . ... ... ... ... Frontispiece 

. (Photograph bv Bertram Park) 

Views of the New Highfield Hall ... ... ... ... ... ... facing p. 6 

(Photographs by F. W. Anderson; Drawing by H. W. Lawton) 

Views of Old Southampton after drawings by Bernard C. Gotch pp. 38, 40, 42, 43, 44 

Tail-Pieces by S. P. Barfoot, E. F. Norman, H. G. Baker, H. Rudgley, 

L. C. Brett, H. W. Lawton. 






By Appointment to H.P.H. The Prince of Wales. 

ROBERT LEWIS, 

(ESTABLISHED 1787) 

19, ST. JAMES’S STREET, LONDON, 

S.W.!. 


Importer of 

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Telephone: Intimidad, Piccy, London. 

Gerrard 3787. Code A. B. C. 5th <S£ 6th. 















-SOUTHERN RAILWAY- 

SOUTHAMPTON DOCKS 



KNOWLEDGE 


Points 

odt the Path to Progress. 

6 

MILESTONES. 

In 1845 158,680 Tons Shipping Entered 

In 1885 2,032,736 . 

In 1925 13,071,266 

In 1927 15,367,825 „ 

In 1928 16,459,997 . 

In 1929 17,246,592 „ 

4 

DRY 

DOCKS. 

on 

WET 

DOCKS. 

□D 

60,000 Ton 
FLOATING 
DOCK. 

ACHIEVEMENTS. 

Knowledge of the Facilities and Up-to- 
date Accommodation at Southampton 
Docks has resulted in Southampton becom¬ 
ing the premier passenger port of the United 
Kingdom. 

21,214 

Feet 

QUAYS. 


Open Deep Water Docks allow Ships to berth at all states of the 
tide and any hour of the Day or Night. 

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or 

General Merchandise of all Descriptions. 

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EXPRESS FREIGHT TRAIN SERVICES TO PRINCIPAL 
CENTRES AND METROPOLITAN MARKETS. 

For particulars of Dock Rates and Charges apply to:— 

G. R. NEWGOMBE, Docks and Marine Manager 
Southampton Docks. 



















FOR BETTER GROCERIES 
FOR BETTER PROVISIONS 
FOR BETTER ATTENTION 
FOR BETTER SERVICE 

CHAPLINS—The BETTER GROCERS, 

PORTSWOOD JUNCTION, SOUTHAMPTON. 
PERSONALLY OWNED and CONTROLLED by R. C. CHAPLIN. 


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FREE CATALOGUES IN ALL SUBJECTS. 

ORDER BY POST YOUR BOOKS AND PERIODICALS. 

RARE AND OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS TRACED. 
BOOKBINDING IN ALL STYLES. BOOKS BOUGHT. 


SUN INSURANCE OFFICE, 


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The Oldest Insurance 
Office in the World. 

ALL PRINCIPAL CLASSES OF INSURANCE TRANSACTED. 

WESSEX BRANCH 

Sun Buildings, Ogle Road, SOUTHAMPTON. 

R. Q. W. MARTIN, Branch Manager. 

SUB-BRANCHES: 93, OLD CHRISTCHURCH ROAD, BOURNEMOUTH. 

2, Hampshire Terrace, PORTSMOUTH. 











H. K. LEWIS & Co. Ltd. 

PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS, 


STUDENTS’ TEXT BOOKS IN SCIENCE; 
THEORETICAL, TECHNICAL and APPLIED. 

Prompt Attention to Orders and Enquiries for Foreign Technical and Scientific Books. 


STATIONERY DEPARTMENT: Note Books, Special and General Stationery 
and other requisites for students. 

SECONDHAND DEPARTMENT: 140, Gower Street. 

Catalogue on application. Telephone : Museum 4031. 


SCIENTIFIC « TECHNICAL CIRCULATING LIBRARY 

Annual Subscription: from One Guinea. 

All the latest works obtainable without delay. Bi-monthly list of 
New Books and New Editions added to the Library sent post free 
regularly on application. 

Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays'to 1 p.m. 


H. K. LEWIS Co. Ltd., 136, GOWER STREET, 
and 24, GOWER PLACE, W.C.l. 

Telephone: Museum 7756-7-8. Telegrams : Publicavit, Eusroad, London. 


COUNTY BOROUGH OF SOUTHAMPTON EDUCATION COMMITTEE. 

SOUTHAMPTON SCHOOL of ARTS and CRAFTS 

PRINCIPAL - P. MOORE, A.R.C.A. (Lond.). 


DAY SCHOOL and EVENING SCHOOL 
CLASSES i n FINE and APP LIED ART. 

INCLUDING : 

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Landscape Painting, Architecture, 

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Embroidery, Raffia, Dress Design, 

Basketwork, Leatherwork, Metalwork, 

Painting and Decorating, Stonecarving, 

Ticket and Sign Writing, Cabinet Making. 

SPECIAL COURSES FOR 

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PREPARATION for VARIOUS EXAMINATIONS. 


For times of Classes, Fees, Scholarships, etc., consult the Prospectus, obtainable 
from the Principal, School of Art, West Marlands, or from 

F. L. FREEMAN, 
Secretary, 

Education Office, 
Southampton. 























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Copyright by Bertram Park ,] 


[ 43 , Dover Street\ London , England. 














WESSEX 

An Annual Record 
of the Movement for a 
University of Wessex 


Vol. I No. 3 


Published by 

The Oxford University Press 
for 

University College, Southampton 


1930 




A MESSAGE TO WESSEX 
from The Right EIon. Lord Forster of Lepe, P.C., G.C.M.G. 

I WISH to send my very hearty greetings to Wessex, and to all who 
are working to build up a University of Wessex based on the 
foundation of University College, Southampton. The ancient 
kingdom of Wessex, with its great paSt Stretching back to the dawn of 
history, and its important modern development, muSt have a university of 
its own to express its cultural life and to give its sons and daughters the 
highest kind of education. Wessex should be bought and read by every 
Wessex man and woman who is interested in any aspeft of education, or 
who has any pride in the traditions and corporate life of this historic part 
of England. 

Forster. 


Note. The frontispiece is a portrait of H.R.H. The Duchess of York, presented 
to University College, Southampton, on the occasion of the opening of the new Hall 
of Residence for Women. 


Wessex 

An Annual Record of the Movement for 
a University of Wessex 


Vol. I No. 3 ist JUNE, 1930 


UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, SOUTHAMPTON 
1929-1930 

A SURVEY 

D URING the year that has passed since Wessex was lai& published, University 
College has progressed and developed in many directions. 

A visitor to the College buildings will see a large block of Zoological and Geological 
laboratories in course of ereCtion, and very soon the building of the back of the proposed 
central block of the main College building will have been Started ; this will contain new 
le&ure-rooms, the need for which has become very pressing. At Highfield Hall, 
behind the existing Hall of Residence for women, an entire new Hall, ready for opening 
by H.R.H. the Duke of York on July iSt, has been ereCted, while in the grounds of 
South Stoneham House the foundations of a new Hall of Residence for men are being 
laid. S 

* * * * * 

The development of the Halls of Residence is a most important faftor in the life of 
University College. Without adequate residential facilities, the College can never lay 
claim to the position of a University, serving a large area of country such as Wessex. 
The decision to increase these facilities and to supply up-to-date accommodation for 
resident Students, has, therefore, placed the College more surely than ever on the way 
towards the goal of University Status. The new Hall for women at Highfield (described 
on p. 6) is one of the best equipped in the country; every Student has her own Study- 
bedroom, and there is also a splendid dining-hall, a library and common rooms, and 
lavatory and bathroom arrangements which excel most of those at the colleges of the 
older Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 

The completion of the Hall was made possible by the generous gift of £14,000 by 
an anonymous donor. As a condition of the gift, the old Highfield Hall, which is a 
house now quite unsuitable for a permanent Hall of Residence, is to be pulled down as 
soon as possible after the completion of the new building, and its site will become an 
open space with lawns and tennis-courts. 


I 








WESSEX 


H.R.H. the Duchess of York was to have opened the new Hall on July iSt, but since 
she has been compelled to cancel all her engagements for the present, the Duke has 
kindly consented to perform the ceremony for her, and it will be a great day for the 
College, when many hundreds of people will be invited to witness the ceremony and to 
inspect the new Hall. The Royal visitor will be received by the Right Hon. the Lord 
ForSter of Lepe, P.C., G.C.M.G., Vice-President of the College, in the unavoidable 
absence of the President, and, after opening the Hall, the Duke will be conduced on a 
tour of inspection of it. 

* * * * * 

The increasing demand for entrance by men Students has made it necessary for 
Council to order the immediate building of a new Hall of Residence for men, even though 
not a single penny of the £50,000 which it will cost is in hand, or even promised. This 
Hall will be built in the grounds of South Stoneham House, the existing men’s Hall, so 
that the gardens and grounds, amounting to about fifteen acres, will be available for 
the residents of both Halls. It will be built on the quadrangle system, around the 
four sides of a central court, on the lines of the colleges of the older Universities, with 
Study-bedrooms grouped round fifteen separate Staircases on three sides, and a dining- 
hall, library, common-rooms and Wardens’ quarters on the fourth side. It will be 
the finest building that the College possesses, and it is hoped that it will be ready for 
occupation in Oftober, 1931. For the 1930-1 session, the residents of the women’s 
small Hall at South Hill , Bassett, will be temporarily housed in the old Highfield Hall, 
and the South Hill Hall will be used to relieve the pressure on the accommodation for 
men until the new Hall is ready. 

By October, 1931, the accommodation available for resident Students should be as 


follows : 

For Men 

South Stoneham House . no 

New Hall at South Stoneham . 135 


Total for men . 245 

For Women 

South Hill Hall . 35 

New Highfield Hall . no 


Total for women . 145 

Total number of resident Students . 390 


In the vacations there is a considerable demand for the use of the Halls of Residence 
by various societies and institutions for courses and conferences. During the year, 
the Dioceses of Southampton and Portsmouth both held Clergy Schools at South 
Stoneham House, and a Conference of Youth, organized by the Reftor of St. Mary’s, 
Southampton, was also held there. The Portsmouth Clergy School and the W.E.A 
are making inquiries with regard to the use of the Hall in the next long vacation. A 
Speakers’ School, in connexion with the Hampshire Federation of Women’s Institutes, 
was held at South Hill Hall in the long vacation last year. 

***** 

The increasing number of Students applying for entrance to the College is a very 
satisfa&ory sign of its widening usefulness to a larger and larger sedlion of the com- 


2 












UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, SOUTHAMPTON 


munity, and every effort is being made to meet this demand by the provision of adequate 
residential facilities. An analysis of the figures shows that, of the 400 Students taking a 
full-time course, juSt over 90 come from Southampton, 130 from other parts of Wessex, 
and 180 from other parts of Great Britain, and abroad. The increase in the number of 
men Students is largely accounted for by a request from the Board of Education that the 
College should undertake to train an extra number of teachers, the demand for whom 
will be considerably increased because of the raising of the school leaving age to fifteen 
years. 

* * * * * 

The vigour of the academic life of the College is revealed by the number of Degrees 
obtained by Students during the year. In all, twenty-seven Honours Degrees were 
obtained, and fourteen Pass Degrees : of the Honours Degrees, three were Firsts, and 
sixteen Seconds. These are, of course, the External Degrees, of the University of 
London, as the College cannot grant its own degrees until it has attained full University 
Status. Mention should also be made of a Research Fellowship conferred on Mr. H. 
H. Hatt by the University College in recognition of his important work in Chemical 
Research at the College. 

It should also be noted that the demand of industry for fully qualified chemists is 
at present greater than the College can supply, and that those who have graduated in 
Chemistry or in Engineering are being absorbed by industry as soon as they leave. 

The Extra-Mural Department, under the direftion of Mr. A. Tomlinson, is making 
rapid development throughout Wessex. Details of this development will be found in 
the Article under Mr. Tomlinson’s signature on p. 89. 

It is interesting to notice that a University Extension Society has been established 
as far afield as Worthing, and it is hoped to establish others at Sandown and Aldershot. 
A series of lectures of a very high Standard is to be inaugurated in Winchester in the 
Autumn, by the Dean of St. Paul’s and Dr. William Brown, Wilde Reader in Mental 

Philosophy at Oxford University. 

* * * * * 

It is a mark of the high esteem in which the College is held that the Bishop of Win¬ 
chester has written to suggest that South Stoneham Rectory, which adjoins the grounds 
of South Stoneham House, should be converted by the combined Dioceses of Winchester, 
Salisbury, Chichester, and Portsmouth, into a hoStel where about twenty or thirty 
candidates for the Ministry can reside, while Studying for their degrees at University 
College. It is hoped that this scheme will materialize. 

***** 

On January 19th, the College suffered a severe loss by the death of Dr. J. W, 
Horrocks, who had been, since 1912, a ledfurer in the Department of History. His 
scholarship brought great repute to the College, and he had devoted his life to deep¬ 
ening and spreading the knowledge of his subject. An appreciation of Dr. Horrocks, 
by the Rev. J. L. Beaumont James, appears on p. 93. 

***** 

Some members of the Staff have resigned during the year : Mr. Kenneth Lindsay, 
Secretary of the Extra-Mural Department, on his appointment as Organizer of Emigra¬ 
tion under the Government; Miss E. M. Ricks, Instructor in Physical Training in the 
Department of Education, on her appointment as Organizer for Physical Training for 
the Southampton Local Education Authority ; Mr. G. W. Dyson, Lecturer in Classics, 


3 


WESSEX 


on his appointment as Learner at WeStfield College ; Dr. D. V. N. Hardy, Assistant 
Leaurer in Chemistry, on his appointment to a post in the Government Research Labora¬ 
tory at Teddington. Dr. Hardy is an old Student of the College, having origi nall y 
secured a scholarship to the College from the Isle of Wight; in his work at Teddington 
he is following Mr. F. E. Ladhams, who, with another old Isle of Wight Student of the 
College, Mr. C. E. C. Nicholls, has been appointed to the technical Staff of British 
Industrial Solvents at Hull. Another old member of the College, Mr. C. A. Joyce, has 
been appointed Deputy Governor of Durham County Prison. 

Among diStin&ions gained by the present members of the Staff, we may mention the 
degree of D.Phil. conferred by the University of Oxford on Mr. S. J. Crawford, Head of 
the Department of English Language and Comparative Philology, who has also been 
eleaed a Member of the Mediaeval Academy of America, the eleaion to a Fellowship 
of King’s College, London, of Professor A. A. Cock, Head of the Department of Educa¬ 
tion, and the eleaion to a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature of Professor 
V. de S. Pinto, Head of the Department of English Literature. 

There have been several new appointments to the Staff d urin g the year : Mr. A. 
Tomlinson, M.Sc. (Econ.), as Secretary of the Extra-Mural Department; Mr. H. T. 
Harry, B.Sc., as Leaurer in the Department of Education ; Mr. W. A. Laidlaw, M.A., 
as Assistant Leaurer in Classics; Mr. A. J, Vogel, D.Sc., as Assistant Leaurer in 
Chemistry ; Mr. Vogel, has, until recently, held a Beit Research Fellowship at the Im¬ 
perial College of Science in the University of London. The Hon. J. F. A. Browne, an 
old Wykehamist, has been appointed Administrative Secretary to the College. 

It is gratifying to be able to record that at the opening of the session the improved 
financial position of the College enabled Council to put into operation the ‘ interim ’ 
salary scale for Members of the Staff, adopted in principle last Summer. This aaion 
brings the salaries of the Staff of University College, Southampton into line with those 
paid in other provincial University institutions, and there can be little doubt that it will 
add considerably to the prestige and Status of the University College. 

An interesting ceremony took place last summer in the Assembly Hall of the 
College, when the President, Mr. C. G. Montefiore, M.A., D.D., D.Litt., was presented 
with a volume entitled Speculum Religionis , being a colle&ion of essays written by 
members of the. Staff, and edited by Professors A. A. Cock and V. de S. Pinto. The gift 
was in celebration of the President’s seventieth birthday, and also as a tribute to the 
notable work he has done for the College over so many years. A short review of this 
book, by Dr. H. Wildon Carr, appears on p. 108. 

* * * * * 

The activities of the Students have been varied and interesting. The annual 
Inter-Varsity Debate was held in January, on the subject: ‘ That War is an inevitable 
by-produft of modern civilization ’. Representatives from fourteen Universities were 
present. 

The Stage Society produced The Last of Mrs. Chejney with great success, and the 
Choral and Orchestral Society performed The Pirates of Penzance to crowded and en¬ 
thusiastic houses. 

A Rowing Club has lately been formed, through the generosity of two members of 
the Staff, who made it possible for boats to be bought. It is hoped soon to have a 
race against one of the ‘ Fours ’ of Winchester College. 


4 



UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, SOUTHAMPTON 

The College platoon, in connection with the local Territorial Force, has been 
revived. 

The Annual Athletic Sports were held moS successfully on May 3rd, on the 
Athletic Ground. 

* * * * * 

With regard to finance, the increase in income is very satisfactory. The income for 
the year 1929-30 was almost £46,000 and the estimated income for 1930-1 is nearly 
£51,000. This is largely accounted for by the encouraging increase in the grants of 
rate-aid by various local authorities. The Borough of Southampton has increased its 
annual contribution by £2,000 bringing its total yearly grant up to £11,000 while the 
Hampshire County Council has this year increased its annual grant of £1,500 to £4,000 
per annum, and the Borough of Bournemouth has given a grant, for the first time, of 
£1,400 per annum, and the Isle of Wight one of £250 per annum. A deputation, 
headed by His Grace the Duke of Wellington, recently waited upon the County Council 
of Dorset, to solicit rate-aid from Dorset. 

The position as regards capital is not nearly so satisfactory. The College is com¬ 
mitted to a capital expenditure of £34,000 on development, during the next few years, 
and to an additional £50,000 for the men’s new Hall of Residence, while gifts and pro¬ 
mises only amount to some £18,000, spread over the next ten years. There is need for 
a vigorous campaign, and for a very generous response, if the College is to be enabled 
to continue the development that is necessary to meet the demands for education that 
are being made upon it, and if University Status is to be secured in the near future. There 
has been much generous support in the last year; the business men and residents of 
Southampton have contributed £30,000 ; a gift of £14,000 from an anonymous donor 
made the completion of the women’s new Hall at Highfield possible ; one of £8,000, 
also anonymous, has paid for the Zoological and Geological laboratories now in course 
of ere&ion; £5,000 from the President and Mrs. Montefiore purchased the freehold 
of the athletic ground of ten and a half acres, and a further anonymous £3,500 will 
provide a pavilion. 

The objeft of the Appeal Campaign, now being conduced throughout Wessex, is 
to obtain the interest and sympathy of all those to whom the cause of education is dear, 
and of all lovers of Wessex, in the work and aims of University College. A scheme of 
‘ Friends of the College ’ is being established on a wide scale, whereby ‘ Friends of the 
College ’ can be enrolled who will undertake to spread knowledge of the Wessex Univer¬ 
sity movement as widely as possible. When the interest and sympathy of friends 
is secured, it is hoped that they will all, according to their several means, do something 
towards the establishment of University College on a firm financial basis, and thereby 
crown the educational system of the district with a University worthy of the great 
traditions of Wessex. 


5 



THE NEW HIGHFIELD HALL 


A LANDMARK on the eastern side of Southampton Common is soon to disappear. 
The old Highfield Hall will soon vanish to discover its younger counterpart 
which has already risen behind it. The significance of this replacement is not 
merely one of development; it is the old order changing, a symbol of the march of the 
times and of the growth of University College, Southampton. 

The history of the building now known as Highfield Hall is difficult to trace. The 
older part, marked at the back by its slated walls, appears to have been erefted either 
late in the 18th or early in the 19th century; it was then called the ‘ old Manor of 
Highfield’. It was surrounded by extensive grounds which on the south adjoined the 
McCalmont property now occupied by Taunton’s School playground, and on the north 
side very few houses Stood. On the east, fields and woods sloped towards Portswood, 
the only road leading in that direftion being Highfield Lane, then a lane indeed, narrow, 
winding and bordered on each side by trees and high hedges. Somewhat later the 
name ‘ Highfield ’ was dropped and the estate generally spoken of as ‘ Heatherdene ’, 
a reminiscence of which is found in Heatherdene Road, a turning out of Highfield Lane. 

About thirty-five years ago, on the death of the owner Mrs. Rogers, the property 
was purchased by Mr. Gudgeon, of Winchester, who added a block somewhat larger 
than the original house, and opened it as a residential hotel, changing its name to 
‘ Highfield Mansion ’. This new block comprised a fine mahogany-panelled dining 
room seating over seventy persons and commanding beautiful views of the Common; 
leading from it a large lounge was constructed. Above, twelve good bedrooms were 
built, below, a billiard room only a few feet smaller than the dining room. Mr. Gudgeon 
also added the winter garden to be used as a recreation room, and laid out tennis courts 
in the field where now Stands the central block of the new Hall of Residence. 

A few years before, the estate had begun to be cut up, and the roads made on either 
side of the house were named Khartoum and Omdurman in memory of recent events in 
the Soudan War. 

At Mr. Gudgeon’s death, the house was sold and the new owner being a minor 
the management was left in the hands of executors, who allowed the house to remain 
unoccupied for five years. During this period of negleCt both old and new parts 
rapidly deteriorated, some parts were attacked by dry rot and the grounds became a 
wilderness of weeds and tangled shrubs. But even when it was in this derelict condition 
the late Dr. Alex Hill, who had accepted the office of Principal of University College, 
saw its possibilities and, being anxious to establish a centre of social life for Students 
and Staff, he rented the house on a long lease and began its renovation. This was a long 
and very expensive undertaking, but finally the house was furnished and at the beginning 
of 1914 re-opened under the name of Highfield Hall. The old part was used as Dr. 
Hill’s private dwelling house, and in the new a few men members of the Staff and Students 
were accommodated. The social life, inaugurated in February, 1914, by a crowded 
evening reception, included dances for Students in the ‘ ball room ’ over the old Stables. 
Sunday afternoon ‘ at Homes ’, where Staff and Students might meet, and ‘ Hall ’ 
dinners once a week to which members of the College Staff other than the residents 
were invited. 


6 




The Dining Hall 

THE NEW HIGHF 1 ELD HALL 





















































































v 







Is 


vj 




i 

I 










THE NEW HIGHFIELD HALL 


On the outbreak of the war, this useful and pleasant intercourse suddenly came to 
an end, and Dr. Hill offered the Hall as it Stood to the Red Cross Society, while he and 
his family retired to the adjoining house in Khartoum Road. There, in the scanty 
leisure left from his College work and his various war activities, which at times included 
the charge of patients on a hospital ship, he continued to improve the garden and grow 
rare and beautiful flowers which gave intense pleasure to the wounded men. As the 
war went on, the number of patients increased, until at times over 120 men were received, 
the convalescents having beds in a large marquee on the lawn. A few cases requiring 
open air treatment were housed in a shelter open to the south, the work of amateurs. 
The billiard room was turned into an excellent operating theatre. 

Meanwhile the beginning of a hoStel for women Students had been made. In 
September 1917, Taunton House, 50 WeStwood Road, was opened by the present 
Warden, and nineteen Students came into residence. To meet the demand for more 
places, the next house was taken and in 1918 the number increased to forty. At the 
conclusion of the war, Dr. Hill decided not to return to Highfield Hall, and as the num¬ 
ber of applicants desiring admission was Still increasing the College Council determined 
to remove the HoStel from WeStwood Road to the Hall, and in September, 1919, this was 
done, the required number of places being made up by the ere&ion of a military hut in 
the garden. Because of the difficulty of obtaining labour at that time, the Students had 
to be admitted a few at a time, the first comers sleeping in the north end of the hut before 
the sections which were to complete it had left the College grounds. 

It was not until December, 1919, that Highfield Hall can be said to have begun its 
corporate life. Then by using every available space, even the open air shelter which 
had been boarded in, over seventy women Students were accommodated. Many were 
the inconveniences of the immediate poSt-war period, but a happy hoStel life was develop¬ 
ing and these were disregarded. All who have shared in that life will ever remember 
the many adts of kindness shown them by Dr. Hill whose memory will always be 
associated with the name of Highfield Hall. 

And now this old Hall has to go. In the eastern end of the grounds a new Hall 
of Residence designed by Lieut.-Col. Gutteridge has been erected, modern, con¬ 
venient, built expressly for its purpose and free from the disadvantages of a converted 
building. The new Hall is built on three sides of a. square, the wings reaching out 
towards the Common, Southampton’s most beautiful possession. The central block 
comprises a library on the ground floor, with a dining hall above it; behind the library 
are the kitchens, to which the serving room on the first floor is connected by means of 
an eledtric lift. Above the Kitchen wing are the quarters for the domestic Staff, and 
the upper floor here has been designed as a sick bay. 

The two wings contain the Students’ quarters with the necessary offices and ‘ cubby¬ 
holes ’ for tea-making ; the Study-bedrooms are of good size, are light and well ven¬ 
tilated. On the ground floor at the end of each wing is a common room facing towards 
the gardens, which will take the place of the old Hall, and towards the grass and trees 
of the Common. 

This great building, of red brick with a Roman tile roof, is fitted throughout with 
casement windows with lead lights. The fittings of the library, like the fittings and 
floor of the dining hall (this last being laid for dancing) are all of oak. An oil-burning 
central heating plant, controlled by automatic thermostatic devices, will provide heat 
for the whole Hall, a heat readily and conveniently adjusted to the season’s needs and 


7 



WESSEX 


to the comfort of the inhabitants. It is unnecessary to add that there are suitable 
quarters for the Warden, Vice-Warden and Matron. 

While the new Highfield Hall shines for the moment as the brightest Star in the 
College’s residential constellation, it will soon have a rival in the new Hall of Residence 
for Men, plans for which have already been passed. This new men’s Hall is to be built 
in the kitchen gardens of South Stoneham House. The latter, a fine William and Mary 
mansion designed by Sir Hans Sloane, is fortunately not to disappear, and its charming 
grounds will be available for the Students living in both Halls, the old and the new. 

This present note, which unfortunately must read rather like a specification, will 
make it clear, the writer hopes, that while University College, Southampton, has been 
called upon to make additional provision for a rapidly increasing number of Students, 
it is in no hurried nor precipitate fashion that accommodation is being provided. Many’ 
no doubt, will regret the disappearance of the old Highfield Hall, but all who have seen 
its modern successor will agree that without being frankly utilitarian and nothing more, 
without being ugly in any sense, it fulfils modern requirements as the old Hall could 
never do. At the same time the skill of the design promises well for the beauty and 
convenience of the new Hall for men. 














THE FIRST UNIVERSITY HALL OF RESIDENCE 


I T is not generally known that the Wessex area was the pioneer in 
one moSt important aspect of English university education. It 
is, of course, a commonplace that the mediaeval university arose 
from voluntary congregations of learners who gathered to listen to popular 
teachers in law, physic, and divinity, and thus developed the Hudium 
generate. But soon there grew up within the university, first in Paris and 
then in Oxford, the system of residential halls, at first voluntary associa¬ 
tions of Students living together for convenience, but, later, definite 
foundations established and endowed by some pious benefaftor, and 
destined to become an integral part of university education as developed 
in England. The first of these English university colleges was founded 
in Salisbury. 

In the year 1238 there occurred one of those migrations from Oxford, 
of which an earlier example had done much to Strengthen—if not, as some 
think, to found—the University of Cambridge. * 1 In that year the papal 
legate, Otto, had excommunicated the scholars of Oxford in retaliation 
for an attack made by some of them on him while a gueSt at the neighbour¬ 
ing abbey of Oseney. This led to a dispersal of the Students, some of 
whom migrated to Northampton, while ‘ others chose the new city of 
Salisbury for the university ’. * It was during the presumably short 
period when Salisbury was a university town that two c houses ’ were 
founded, for the earlier of which it may well be claimed that it is the 
earliest foundation of its kind in England. In Oxford the House of 
Balliol Scholars existed in June 1266, though its Statutes and charters 
followed later; Merton was adumbrated by the foundation of Walter 
Merton in 1264, but this college was at first an endowed house at Malden 
in Surrey, which managed estates, the revenues of which were to be devoted 
to supporting twenty Students at Oxford and elsewhere. Merton College 
in Oxford dates from 1274. University College, Oxford, may claim that 
the bequest of William of Durham, in 1249, to the university was ulti¬ 
mately used to establish the society from which it grew, but this did not 

1 Ann. 1209, Rogeri de Wendover Cbrott. (Rolls Series, No. 84), ii. 51. 

1 T. Walsingham, Ypodigma Neuffriae (Rolls Series, No. 28, Vol. vii.), 141. The University of North¬ 
ampton continued till 1265, when it was suppressed by royal decree (Close Roll, 49 Henr. Ill, m. iod., 
printed in A. F. Leach, Educational Charters and Documents, (Cambridge, 1911) p. 162. 


9 








WESSEX 


take place till 1280. * 1 * It was in 1262 that the House of the Valley Scholars 
at Salisbury was founded. 

‘ We, Giles, by the sufferance of God bishop of Salisbury ’—so runs 
the foundation charter—‘ to the honour of the same Lord, the glorious 
Virgin Mary and the Blessed Nicholas, for the health of our soul and for 
the souls of our benefactors and all of those for whom we are under whatso¬ 
ever title or manner bound, have thought fit to found, establish, build and 
con£tru£t a house for the use and ownership of scholars, which shall be 
called the house of the Valley Scholars of the Blessed Nicholas, for ever, 
with the consent and assent of Sir Robert, dean, and the chapter of Salis¬ 
bury, of the master and brethren of the Blessed Nicholas’s Hospital of 
Salisbury, in a meadow near the cathedral church of Salisbury and the 
kin g’s way in front of the said hospital, for the perpetual reception and 
maintenance of a warden for the time being, two chaplains and 20 poor, 
needy, well-behaved and teachable scholars serving God and the Blessed 
Nicholas there, and there, living, studying and becoming proficient in 
the Holy Scriptures and the liberal arts 

The house was to be under the governance of a warden, who was to 
have ‘ full power of correction both in temporal and spiritual matters with¬ 
in the circuit of the same house . . . saving to those aggrieved a right of 
appeal to the dean ’ of the cathedral church. The dean and chapter were 
made patrons of the house after the demise of the existing warden, Sir John 
Holtby, canon of Salisbury 1 —a provision which suggests that the in¬ 
stitution was already in existence when the charter was granted. The 
name of the house was borrowed from Paris, where the ‘ Maison de 1 ’ 
Ordre du Val des Escoliers ’ had been established, about 1228, by the 
religious order of that name, whose founder was an English master of 
Paris University, but there seems to have been no other connection with 
the French institution. 

The House of the Valley Scholars was remembered in the will of 
Robert of Careville, treasurer of Salisbury, who, amongSt many divers 
bequests, left half a mark to each of the scholars, and all his cooking- 
utensils and his spoons to the house. 3 This was in 1267, and in 1296 a 
visitation of the house was held by the dean and chapter, 4 but after this we 
can find no trace of it. In 1238, however, another college or hall of resid- 

1 See C. E. Mallet, A Hifiory of the University of Oxford (London, 1924 ), i. 83 - 5 . 

1 Charters and Documents of the Cathedral City and Diocese of Salisbury, ed. by W. R. Jones (Rolls 
Series, No. 9 ), 334 - 6 . 

* Ibid., 344 - 5 . 

* Ibid., 368 - 9 . 

IO 



THE FIRST UNIVERSITY HALL OF RESIDENCE 


ence for thirteen Students in theology was founded in Salisbury by Walter 
de la Wyle, bishop of Salisbury, under the title of the House of the Scholars 
of St. Edmund. The new house, for which a new church was built and 
a new parish created, was placed under the control of a provoSt appointed 
by the bishop and his successors, or, during a vacancy in the see, by the 
dean and chapter. The founder provided that both provoSt and Students 
should be plainly dressed in clothes of one colour : all were to take their 
meals in the refectory, and were to sleep in a common dormitory unless 
excused owing to illness or other juSt cause. The religious observances of 
the house were prescribed in detail, and the responsibility of the whole 
administration of the house, including catering and the provision of clothes 
for the Students, was left in the hands of the provoSt. For this purpose an 
endowment of twenty marks a year was appropriated from the resources of 
the church of Winterbourne Whitchurch. 1 

Of this house we have no further mention, and presumably both it 
and that of the Valley Scholars disappeared when the town ceased to be a 
university centre. When this happened we do not know, but the laSt 
mention of the Students as a whole is in 1278, when a dispute arose be¬ 
tween the chancellor and the sub-dean of Salisbury as to the jurisdiction 
over‘ the scholars living in Salisbury for the sake of pursuing their Studies ’. 
Finally it was agreed that the chancellor should have control over all civil 
and personal actions in which a Student of the university was concerned, 
but that the sub-dean should have jurisdiction over crimes concerned with 
matters pertaining to the cure of souls. 2 


K. H. VICKERS. 


^bid., 346-9. 

2 Salisbury Liber Rubrum, £ 99, prinred in Rashdall, Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages 
(Oxford, 1895), II., ii. 765-6. 



II 









THE HOUSE OF THE VALLEY SCHOLARS AT 

SOUTHAMPTON 


I T is now nine years since the Council of University College South¬ 
ampton then under the wise and far-seeing direction of the present 
Vice-Chancellor of Bristol University and of Dr. C. G. Montefiore 
(Still, happily, our own President) purchased the house in the Valley of the 
Itchen at Swaythling known as South Stoneham House. This beautiful 
residence was originally built by the Sloane family in the time of William 
and Mary, and was for many years occupied by Sir Samuel Montagu, first 
Baron Swaythling. It then became the first residential hall for men at 
Southampton ; a hall for women Students had previously been established 
in the former residence of Dr. Alex Hill, one time Principal of the College, 
at Highfield Hall. The women Students have thus been housed upon 
a hill but the men students have indeed revived the old association 
of Wessex with its house of the Valley Scholars by the foundation 
of South Stoneham House. Nor are the present foundations at Highfield 
and South Stoneham alien in spirit to that established at Salisbury 
in 1262. 1 The present Students in our halls of residence may not perhaps 
be as ‘ poor and needy ’ as their forerunners but they are as ‘ well behaved 
and teachable ’, learning to serve God in Church and State and becoming 
proficient in the liberal arts and in all branches of modern and godly 
learning. It cannot indeed be said that the modern Wardens enjoy 
those ‘ powers of correction both in temporal and spiritual matters within 
the circuit of the house ’ possessed by Sir John Holtby but their powers 
are perhaps not less real though exercised in more subtle and less obvious 
ways ! The common meal in College refectory and in hall is Still cardinal 
to the residential life of the scholars but modern requirements have led to 
the substitution of Study-bedrooms for the common dormitory. South 
Stoneham possesses, too, the equivalent of a college chapel in the facilities 
it enjoys in the parish church of St. Mary which Stands within its grounds. 

What a hoStel or residential hall Stands for above all else is the cor¬ 
porate life: the fife lived in common, with a common end in view, the 
preparation for a future life of service in the common weal. Such a life 
is a life of Study—in library, common rooms and private rooms ; it is a 
life of Strenuous and free interaction of a great range of intellectual, 
practical and scientific pursuits ; a life of joyous and buoyant physical 

1 See the preceding article by the Principal of University College. 


12 









THE HOUSE OF THE VALLEY SCHOLARS AT SOUTHAMPTON 


activities and adventure; a life in which enduring friendships and com¬ 
panionships are formed and in which personality is unfolded, integrated, 
and enriched. Important and far-reaching as is the contact between the 
mind of the Student and that of Iris teachers in the lecture-room, still more 
important in this integration of personality is the daily intercourse between 
man and man in the common room, the library, the refeCtory. Teacher 
and taught alike learn of one another through the informal but vital 
comradeship of the table and the chase as much as, and in many respefts 
even more than in the real but more formal companionship of the lecture- 
room. The spiritual significance of a university lies indeed not in its 
lectures and academic administration but rather in its life ; it is a society 
of scholars not a system of schedules ; a society not a place—though it 
muSt be a society in a place, a place of its own. The need of Wessex 
therefore, and the need of England is for a new generation of pious 
benefactors with vision and generosity not less than that of our fathers of 
old, a new William of Wykeham, a new Walter de Merton, a new William 
of Durham. We have already one House of the Valley Scholars, but there 
are yet a hundred or more 4 poor needy well-behaved and teachable 
scholars ’ for whom house room muSt be found in 1931, for whom another 
House in the Valley, hard by the present South Stoneham House muSt be 
built. Is there no one in Hampshire, Wilts, Dorset or Sussex to heed 
the call ? 


ALBERT A. COCK. 









THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 


‘... is within you ’. 

T HEY tell me Christ was born to-day. 
And that He died this evening, born 
In hidden places where men pray. 

And dying on the hill of scorn. 

Because—they say—this man was God, 
There is no measure to His pain. 

But, as when ancient earth He trod, 

To-day He lives and dies again. 

The everlasting moment fills 
The universe, and it is now 
That God walks on the sharp brown hills, 
And feels the thorns about His brow. 

Now in my life He lives and dies ; 

For I am He, and I betray 
The Christ I am with kiss that lies. 

And I deny Him every day. 

When Judas in me sells my Lord, 

The Christ in me is scourged and crowned; 
I know the piercing of the sword. 

The spears of fife that fence me round. 

But it is I who mock that death, 

That one immortal sacrifice; 

And, as the Christ draws His last breath, 
Be sure I shall deny Him thrice. 

For all are one : the broken man, 

The Lord arisen from the tomb. 

The child that laughed and played and ran. 
The babe that moved in Mary’s womb. 


i4 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 


The thief that prayed, the thief that cursed, 

The soldiers Standing easy there, 

The beSt disciple, and the worst. 

The world that gazed, and did not care— 

All, all are one. The whole is life. 

Which in its being seems to move, 

With inward never-ending Strife, 

To something that is yet to prove— 

The undiscovered dreamed-of end 
Beyond our sight, in what far land 
We have not heard ; the unknown friend 
Who, more than we, shall understand 

What we desire ; the magic word 
To lift the darkness in the mind, 

That we may see and know our Lord, 

And fear no longer, as the blind 

Feared until on their lids there came 
The touch of Christ, the edge of light. 

And men like trees in air like flame 
Walked in a blinding world of sight. 

R. A. HODGSON. 



*5 









HAS SCIENCE MADE US HAPPIER? 


T HE Editor has asked me to write on the theme e Has Science made us 
Happier ? ’ lam not going to discuss what is meant by happi¬ 
ness, for I know no more about that than anybody else. But I 
may consider what is meant by science. In that connexion, as affeCting 
the populace, it is the applications of science that are probably thought of. 
The invention of the Steam-engine and the introduction of power-driven 
machinery are direCt consequences of increased scientific knowledge, and 
mod people when they use the term ‘ science ’ mean something of that 
kind. 

There has recently been broadcast a history of what is called ‘ the 
industrial revolution ’, which began apparently towards the end of the 
eighteenth century, and came to its climax in the nineteenth. The old 
scattered handworkers were displaced, the factory system was introduced, 
and people left the land to flock into the towns, to take their place each as 
a cog in a complicated machine, with division of labour, so that no one 
completed a finished product, but each contributed a small portion, and 
usually the same portion, day in day out, for a great part of their lives. 
Whether this routine work made them happier, by setting them free to 
think of other things during their merely manual labour, I do not know : 
it certainly was not calculated to that end. The aim was greater produc¬ 
tiveness, and for the moSt part ignored human welfare. Men, women, 
and children became part of the faCtory machinery. Some of the opera¬ 
tions were so simple, and by constant repetition the workers became so 
skilful, that ignorant and otherwise helpless people could be employed; 
and children were to a large extent enslaved. Indeed, the whole popu¬ 
lation ran some danger in this direction, had not the conditions been so 
dispiriting that a revolt against it began ; trade unions could no longer be 
suppressed, but on the contrary became gradually Strong and influential. 
This, though a necessary, was not a happy result, for it began an era of 
conflict and distrust between operatives and employers, instead of the co¬ 
operation and recognition of mutual benefit, which is now at length being 
recognized as the only salutary condition. 

Undoubtedly production increased enormously, and our export trade 
began to flourish. Indeed, export of manufactured goods soon became 
a necessity, in order to provide food for the increased number of people : 
some of the land that could have supported them was not cultivated. 
Ocean commerce became essential to livelihood, and the Steamship greatly 

16 


HAS SCIENCE MADE US HAPPIER? 


increased the range of our imports. But, in spite of the increase of riches, 
the inequality of possession tended, on the whole, to increase distress ; 
and it has taken a long time for the Poor Law and other systems of relief 
to adjust their methods to the new conditions : indeed, that adjustment 
has not even now been accomplished, notwithstanding the efforts that are 
being made in that direction. It may be said that the country became 
both richer and poorer; richer in commodities and the means of pro¬ 
duction, poorer in a sane and healthy human life. That also is in process 
of being mended now. The demand for leisure and for increased oppor¬ 
tunities of education is becoming more vigorous every year : so that out 
of the turmoil of the nineteenth century we are beginning to see signs of 
hope. 

Unfortunately the rapid advance of scientific knowledge could be 
applied, not only to industry, but also to military operations. The Army 
itself is becoming mechanized and chemicalized. There has been not 
only a revolution in industry, but in warfare ; and the result of that is too 
well known. 

It is useless to hold science responsible for any of these things : 
increase of knowledge in itself must be good. The use that people make 
of it is an affair, not of science, but of the good or ill will of mankind. 
If our aim is mutual destruction, the means are forthcoming, and only 
await the will to use them. Fortunately the evil has now been at length 
internationally recognized, and there is good hope in that direction also. 
No one can be crazy enough to suppose that the application of science to 
destructive purposes has increased happiness. 

Leaving this obvious side of the question, and returning to the in¬ 
dustrial conditions, it is manifest that the applications of science have 
largely changed the face of the country. The great towns of the north 
have been blackened by them ; and, though at one time, say in 1851, the 
hope was expressed that England would become the workshop of the 
world, there were not wanting prophets, such as Carlyle and Ruskin, 
who preached against such an ideal. Food muSt come out of the soil, 
agricultural operations muSt somewhere be conducted; it is the only 
method of utilizing solar energy for the sustenance of life. And there has 
been a great increase in scientific knowledge on this side also, though not 
yet has chemical and biological science been applied to anything like the 
extent that is possible. Those prophets told us, and I doubt not they were 
right, that the more natural conditions associated with cultivation of the 
soil would conduce to increased happiness. It seemed a poor ambition 


17 






WESSEX 


to leave these privileges to the foreigner, and to debar our own people 
from their rightful share. 

Here, for instance, is an extract from Mr. Ruskin : 

All England may, if it so chooses, become one manufacturing town ; and English¬ 
men, sacrificing themselves to the good of general humanity, may live diminished lives 
in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot 
become a factory, nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make iron digestible 
by the million, nor substitute hydrogen for wine ... so long as men live by bread, 
the far away valleys must laugh as they are covered with the gold of God, and the 
shouts of His happy multitudes ring round the wine-press and the well. 

When these things were uttered, as they were in the Cornhill Magazine 
some seventy or eighty years ago, they sounded to the people of that day 
crazy. An outcry arose against the articles, and they were suppressed. 
But here is more wisdom from the same source : 

What is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of 
pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent well-administered competence, modeSt, 
confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving heaven to decide 
whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in 
it, and have resolved to seek, not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher 
fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and 
honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. 

The nineteenth century mainly emphasized the advantages of in¬ 
creased production, while the use that was to be made of the products of 
industry, or the wealth that might result from it, was left mainly unattended 
to. Mr. Ruskin urged that 

the prosperity of any nation is in exaft proportion to the quantity of labour which it 
spends in obtaining and employing means of life . . . not merely wisely producing, 
but wisely distributing and consuming . . . consumption absolute is the end, crown, 
and perfection of production; and wise consumption is a far more difficult art than 
wise production. Twenty people can gain money for one who can use it; and the 
vital question, for individual and for nation, is never ‘ how much do they make ? ’ but 
* to what purpose do they spend ? ’ 

Well, our national spending at the present time is mainly absorbed, 
either in preparation for defence, or as interest on the enormous burden of 
past wars. Very little is available for expenditure in happy and educative 
and really human directions. That is a sad chapter, and the present 
generation will not see it closed. 

But now, if we cease from thinking about the applications of science 
—or rather, perhaps, its misapplications—and consider science itself, we 
shall have a different Story to tell. Properly applied, even its applications 

18 



HAS SCIENCE MADE US HAPPIER? 


have been beneficent. The bicycle and the motor-car are applications of 
scientific knowledge, and surely, on the whole, they have increased the 
sum of human happiness. So have electric light and wireless telegraphy ; 
and the new possibility of flying through the air seems to be enjoyed by 
the young people who take part in it. 

Education has hardly advanced sufficiently for discoveries in pure 
science to be thoroughly appreciated, as some day they may be. Yet 
people have shown themselves keenly interested in recent discoveries, such 
as those about the Structure of the atom and other abstract and rather 
recondite subj efts, which arouse the utmost enthusiasm in those able to 
pursue them. The science of astronomy has enlarged our conception of 
the universe far beyond the ideas of any previous generation ; and this of 
itself, when properly grasped, must surely add to the joy of life. Even 
while new fafts can only be apprehended with difficulty, there is some joy 
in learning. And, as soon as apprehension becomes easier and intel- 
leftual effort is mitigated, there muSt be a refined pleasure in contemplation, 
such as the multitude can only obtain now from the resources of art and 
music. Science has not yet reached that State; it is comparatively of 
recent growth ; but that Stage muSt come, and surely we may have faith 
that greater knowledge of the universe in which we live, fuller realization 
of the part that we and other living creatures are privileged to take in it, 
and deeper certainty of life’s beneficent purpose, will assuredly tend 
towards the evolution of a sane and wholesome and permanent joy. 

OLIVER LODGE. 



J 9 









THE FOUNTAIN 
by V. de S. Pinto 

I N the midst of darkness there is a bright Fountain, 
tossing always its splendour high towards heaven ; 
sometimes it seems a slender shaft, a tall column, 
then changes to a flower, a golden lily of light, 
then a slim nymph unveiling shining breast and thigh, 
always changing a quenchless spring of loveliness. 

I was born in darkness among the shadow-folk ; 

I am only a shadow in the old dim forest 
that sleeps around the Fountain, yet I have dreamt that I 
one day might dare to leave this world of death and night, 
might dare to plunge into the living spring of light. 

I have dreamt that I came forth a radiant shape endu’d 
with the life-giving beauty of the shining waters. 

I came into the forest, and as I shook bright drops 
out of my hair, a trail of light ran through the gloom 
and spread like a flood of fire up to the murky sky 
turning it to heavenly blue, and on the old dry boughs 
a million green and golden shoots flamed and a choir 
of all the birds of the world burst into Starry song, 
and children with bright hair ran laughing thro’ the glades 
among a wilderness of dewy delicate flowers, 
moonlight colour’d and silver, purple, azure and gold. 

This is only a dream, and I am Still a shadow 

among the shadow-folk in the dead dark forest 

but the Fountain is no dream. Still in virgin splendour 

it proudly shines, and I Still see and adore its presence, 

always changing a quenchless spring of loveliness. 


20 


NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 


A LITTLE more than ten years ago a committee of eminent men 
appointed to inquire into the position of natural science in 
education found it necessary to open the introduction to their 
report with the remark : £ Not for the first time, our educational conscience 
has been Stung by the thought that we are as a nation neglecting science 
Since that time much has been done to further the Study of science, both 
in the secondary school and at the university. No one, it is supposed, 
will now question the wisdom of this ; and few will deny the desirability of 
more effort Still in this direction. 

The growth of movements is rapid in these days. The movement to 
secure for science the recognition which it deserves and requires in our 
schools is of comparatively very recent growth. Not until 1864 was 
attention drawn to its negleCt by the Royal Commission on the nine 
Public Schools, and the recommendation made that all boys should receive 
instruction in some branch of natural science during part at least of their 
school career. At the very time when this inquiry was being made, ‘ the 
only instruction in science at one of the greatest schools in England was 
given on Saturday afternoons by a visiting teacher, and his meagre appara¬ 
tus was Stored in so damp a cupboard that his experiments usually broke 
down. It is not surprising that the head master of this school told the 
Commissioners that “ instruction in physical sciences was, except for 
those who had a taSte for them and intended to pursue them as amateurs 
or professionally, praCtically worthless ” ’. 

Much later than this the situation, though it showed some improve¬ 
ment, was extremely unsatisfactory. Well within the present century a 
novelist could write with truth of a junior science master who became 
‘ almost delirious with joy at having discovered a boy who loved science 
for its own sake and not merely because the pursuit thereof excused him 
from Latin verse ’. Not much earlier the Steps taken in certain schools to 
introduce the teaching of science were halting and uncertain, the work 
was done under great difficulties, and was regarded with jealousy by the 
Staffs, with contempt by the boys, and with indifference by the parents. 

It can now be said that the subjeCt has won an honoured place in the 
curriculum of all Public and secondary schools. The causes of this 
advance are many, and some are not difficult to identify. Possibly first 
should be placed the efforts of gifted and enthusiastic teachers within the 
schools. Such pioneers—as is the case with almost all pioneers—had to 


21 



WESSEX 


endure a good deal of contumely, but were fortified by their faith and far¬ 
sightedness. Many of them now see the partial flowering of the plant 
whose seed they sowed. 

Again, schools are bound to reflect public interest to some extent. 
At about the time that the Struggle began, the work of men like Darwin, 
Kelvin, Tyndall, Spencer, and Huxley had commenced to arouse popular 
interest in science, and a demand to know more about it. More books— 
apart from formal text-books—made their appearance, and were eagerly 
read. 

During these years, however, secondary education was within the 
reach of but few in the case of boys, and hardly existed for girls. A few 
big Public Schools educated a limited number of boys, and the old, and 
mostly small, grammar schools were sparsely distributed over the country. 
In both cases, boys were either denied science teaching altogether or were 
discouraged from pursuing it unless they had shown incapacity for classics 
or mathematics. 

While these schools remained under the classical tradition, another 
group of schools arose under the old Science and Art Department, and 
these made the serious mistake of fostering science—taught, as we now 
see, on the wrong lines and with the wrong aims—to the exclusion of 
literature. Much has been done since to unite the two weak educational 
Streams into a strong current in all kinds of secondary schools. But it is 
sometimes held that, in some cases, the older schools have not been 
entirely freed from all their prejudices, and that many of the newer schools 
have missed some of their opportunities. 

The true educationist, when considering the right of any subjeft to a 
place in the time-table, asks, not so much what the utility-value of it will 
be in the after-career of the pupil, but what its value is in training the mind 
and in moulding the character. A committee of the British Association, 
dealing with the subjeft of the teaching of science, in 1866, drew the valu¬ 
able distinction between scientific information and scientific training. 
This, by no means the only instance of its kind when a somewhat revolu¬ 
tionary and important truth is put forward, has been loSt sight of again and 
again. But it may now be claimed that not only those who are direftly 
concerned with the teaching of science, but also all educationists, pro¬ 
fessional and otherwise, are becoming alive to the value of the subjeft in 
opening the mind, training the judgment, Stirring the imagination, and 
cultivating a spirit of reverence. 

The battle—if so it may be termed—between those who advocate 
the value of classics and those who urge the claims of science is Still being 


22 


NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 


waged in some quarters. The topic Still gives occasional relief to the 
secretaries of many school debating societies when drafting their pro¬ 
grammes. But the truth is that there is no occasion for battle.. The 
two sub)efts are in many respeCts complementary. No scientist in his 
senses would seek to deprecate the proven value of classics ; and it is to 
be hoped that no classic would deny the value of science, quite apart from 
its utility value. The humanizing influence of science, properly taught, 
has been much obscured in the paSt; but it is now being realized that its 
human interest can and muSt be developed side by side with its material 
and mechanical aspefts. 

We have learnt at great coSt how necessary science is in war, both in 
offence and defence. We hope that the scientific equipment of our nation 
will not be called upon again to serve these objects. How it can contribute 
to the prosperity of industries and trade, and how it can bring prosperity 
and power to the individual or the nation, all are ready to admit. Whether 
or not a&ual warfare between great nations is now a thing of the paSt, 
commercial warfare is bound to continue, and the Stress of international 
competition is bound to be intensified. TThe nation in which the scientific 
attainments of its experts, or, indeed, of its rank and file, do not continue 
to advance is doomed to be beaten in the commercial Struggle, and will 
have to pay very dearly for its neglefi. The work of the scientist underlies 
every commodity offered for sale, and is at the root of all material progress. 
It will be continuously called upon to solve world-problems such as that 
of the future supply of energy. There is no doubt that the present supplies 
of coal and oil are by no means inexhaustible. We are spending our 
irreplaceable capital and, possibly very few generations hence, our descen¬ 
dants will find that almost all mechanical locomotion and transport and 
most manufactures will cease, unless scientists have devised means of 
trapping and using the daily energy-revenue from the sun, or are able 
otherwise to obtain large supplies of energy. 

These Statements are incontrovertible. But the present purpose is 
to estimate the value of science to our adolescents in equipping them ‘ to 
perform juStly, skilfully, and magnanimously the offices both public and 
private of peace and war ’—though many will now desire to see the omis¬ 
sion of the laSt two words from Milton’s definition. It is relevant to 
remember that the percentage in the secondary schools of pupils who will 
ultimately proceed to universities and similar institutions is small. 

Science has several diStinCfc kinds of educational value, some of which 
are confined to it. It can arouse and satisfy the element of wonder in our 
natures. No one would assert that this cannot be done by works of art 


23 



WESSEX 


of all kinds, without the purview of formal science ; but there are some 
direftions in which alone a knowledge of science can do it. A tree, taken 
as a whole, is an objed of wonder to a contemplative mind ; but to anyone 
having some knowledge of the marvellous life-processes going on in the 
leaves and other parts, the sense of wonder, and, indeed, of reverence, is 
greatly heightened. 

As an intelledual exercise in affording discipline to the powers of 
mind, it shares with other subjeds such advantages as its insistence upon 
precision, accuracy, and extreme care. To many, the Statement that a 
thorough training in classics may give a man a mental equipment which 
would be of the greatest assistance to him in, say, organizing a large busi¬ 
ness concern appears to be fantastic. But experience has shown it to be 
true. Science, however. Stands alone, in that it offers appeal to experiment 
in order to test theories. The professors at Pisa taught the theory pro¬ 
pounded by Aristotle (who did not appeal to experiment) nearly two 
thousand years previously that, if two weights were dropped, one of, say, 
ten pounds, the other of one pound, the former would fall ten times as faSt 
as the latter. The youthful Galileo described this Statement as nonsense. 
The professors said, ‘ But look—here it is written down quite plainly. 
Aristotle says so distindly ’. Galileo replied, ‘ But the weights don’t say 
so. I’ll show you ’. To-day quite junior pupils can be given the scientific 
attitude of mind by, for example, a simple Study of combustion. The 
ancient explanation, by the aid of Plato’s assumption, may be placed before 
them, and they will suggest experiments to teSt it. On its being de¬ 
molished, the phlogiston theory of Stahl—which for many years repre¬ 
sented the most perfed generalization known to the beSt intelleds of its 
day, and which, though subsequently exploded, served as a Stimulus to 
much fine research—is then presented. It was regarded, not as a tem¬ 
porary hypothesis, but as a permanent acquisition, an enduring conquest 
of truth. To-day the word is but an empty symbol, and the testing 
experiments suggested by the pupils, together with an account of the work 
of Lavoisier and others, prove it so. The modern hypothesis is then dealt 
with, and as many experiments as possible are suggested and carried out in 
an attempt to discredit it. It is found to account for all of the known fads. 
But the teacher has failed in his purpose if he leaves his pupils with the 
attitude of mind : e Those are the things they used to think ; but now we 
know what the true explanation is ’. They should be left at the Standpoint: 

‘ Much of what we consider beSt in the theories of to-day, including that 
under present notice, may to-morrow be rejeded ’. Of course, in our 
schools, the exigencies of the present examination system prevent the 


24 





NATURAL SCIENCE IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 


science master from giving full rein to this kind of training. His pupils 
will be expe&ed to reproduce a considerable array of fa&s, and he, un¬ 
fortunately, is judged in some quarters largely by the results achieved by 
them in answering half a dozen questions in a couple of hours or so. 
Nevertheless, science teaching has undergone a great change for the better 
during the laSt few years, and now goes far towards giving the kind of 
outlook described above. 

Thus, science can quicken and cultivate directly the faculty of 
observation; it can teach the learner to reason from fads which come 
under his own notice, and to make rapid and accurate generalizations. 
Without it, there is the real danger of the mental habit of method and 
arrangement never being acquired. Those who have had much to do with 
the teaching of the young know that their worst foe is indolence, often 
not wilful, but due to the faft that curiosity has never been Stimulated and 
the thinking powers never awakened. Memory has generally been 
cultivated, sometimes imagination; but those whose faculties can best 
be reached through external and sensible objects have been left or made 
dull by being expected to remember and appreciate without being allowed 
to see and criticize. In the science lesson, the eye and judgment should 
always be called upon for an effort, and, because the result is within the 
vision and appreciation of the pupil, he is encouraged as he seldom can be 
when he is dealing with literature. It has often been noticed that pupils, 
when they begin to learn science, receive an intellectual refreshment which 
makes a difference even to their literary work. And, in spite of some 
conservatism even among teachers of science themselves, it is incredible 
that the teaching of a subject whose life depends upon discovery can for 
long be Sterilized. 

Not much need be said as to the content of the science teaching in 
our schools. The advanced courses set up since the war enable the teach¬ 
ing of the subjeft to university scholarship—i.e. nearly to ‘ pass ’ degree 
—Standard in many of our schools. And here it may be pointed out that, 
as business men in the north of England discovered years ago, a boy from 
one of our secondary schools who has remained until the age of eighteen 
or so, has passed through the sixth form, has had the advantage of an 
advanced course—it matters litde in what subjects—and has taken some 
part in the government of the school, is an infinitely better, more efficient, 
and more mature individual than his fellow who leaves at sixteen. The cry 
of professional and business men used to be : ‘ Let us catch them young, 
and then we can teach them our business ’. A man who controls a large 
business in the Midlands recently described those who leave at sixteen to 


*5 



WESSEX 


the writer by the possibly offensive, but expressive, term c half-baked ’, 
and Sated definitely that they are caught and passed within a few months 
by their brothers who have had the advantage of a further two years’ 
training at possibly the moSt critical period of their lives. 

It remains to note, with great satisfadion, the recent and rapid advance 
in the teaching of biology in the secondary schools. Botany has been 
taught—principally to girls—for many years, and generally with a view to 
examinations. But the whole subjed is now seen to be forcing its way to 
the front. One difficulty at the moment is the dearth of teachers qualified 
in the subjed, particularly in boys’ schools. This problem should be 
solved within the next few years. It is thought that no one will deny the 
need for this teaching. It is the only opportunity offered to pupils to Study 
something which is living and growing : it gives them a vastly increased 
interest in the objeds seen daily on every hand, and begets a real sympathy 
with and reverence for the same : by implication it teaches them the ‘ fads 
of life ’ in the best possible way, and gives them a healthy and natural idea 
of sex : it is closely bound up with nutrition and with hygiene : and, to 
take lower ground, there is a ready market, especially in the Empire, for 
the trained and qualified biologist. Several of our great Public Schools 
are preparing for, or are already engaged in, the teaching of the subjed 
to at least the same Standard as that attained in chemistry and physics ; and 
the laSt three years have seen much extension in this diredion on the part of 
the secondary schools. 

Finally, in many of the secondary schools, and principally in the sixth 
forms, attempts are being made to give the pupils something more than a 
nodding acquaintance with such subjeds as astronomy and geology. The 
wisdom of this cannot be questioned, in spite of the already heavy pressure 
in the time-table. Some knowledge of the vaStness of inter-stellar dis¬ 
tances, of the almost inconceivable ages of geological time, and of the 
evidence, afforded by the rocks, of the extreme slowness and unerring 
certainty of the processes of evolution in plants and animals, will give a 
desire to acquire more information after leaving school, possibly a delight¬ 
ful hobby in after-life, a death-blow to a cramped parochial outlook, and 
a sense of perspedive to the mind which will enable the individual to 
arrive at a saner and truer philosophy of life. 

P. T. FREEMAN. 


26 



THE SIDHE 
by R. A. Hodgson 

W ITHIN the space between the night and day 
I saw the lordly riding of the Sidhe; 

Soundless they Streamed along the aery way. 
And, as they passed, they turned and gazed on me. 

They sang, their voices drifting down the wind, 
c O sweet it is to ride or rest at will; 

Sweet is that land where all are young and kind, 

The everlasting burg beneath the MU. 

‘ There dance the Hidden People aU day long; 

There sleep they in the scented moon-deep night; 

And all their dreams are shapen into song. 

And all their songs are muted with delight. 

‘ No sorrow is there, only joy and peace 

Within the fort of glass, where joyous words 
Take form and in miraculous increase 
Circle like clouds of golden singing-birds. 

‘ There all tilings beautiful have endless life; 

The music dies not, but dwells in the air 
As in a shell, and aU the world is rife 

With sounds and shapes and colours wondrous fair. 

‘ When will the sons of men cease to pursue 

Cloud-shapes, and shifting lights, and vain desire 5 ?— 
* Who knows, brother ? ’—‘ Brother, I answer you : 

When the last day comes with God’s kiss of fire ’. 
Their distant voices, mingling, soared and sank; 

The longing heart within me failed and died 
To see the mists engulf them rank by rank. 

In all their dim, pale glory and their pride. 

I have no luSt for tilings of old delight; 

The neighbours say, with sidelong glance at me, 

‘ Do not be crossing him that is not right. 

Since once he saw the riders of the Sidhe ’. 


27 



SOUTHAMPTON : SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


C OMPARED with some phenomena of the organic world, ports 
often seem precarious growths. The passage of nations is 
often marked bp the rise and fall of ports, by their fluctuations 
in power and fame. The shores of the seas are scattered with debris 
where ports have flourished; the sea-winds that brought vigour and 
prosperity have in time carried trade to other shores. Ports arise where 
great peoples, and great efforts, create and sustain them : they grow only 
on good soil and under favourable conditions; they continue only by 
continuous adaptation to changing needs. 

In the pa§t ports served relatively limited areas, their scope was at 
moSt regional. To-day, in the laSt resort, all ports ate world-ports ; they 
exist for, or in face of, world-competition. Corinth, Athens, Constanti¬ 
nople, Venice and Genoa as economic Structures have changed or faded, 
not more in fact than in principle. For to-day the world in a new sense 
is a whole; a new order and balance is emerging. Extension, and 
development by extension, is as good as ended ; ‘ intension ’, along with 
specialization, is left. Southampton, though old, is a port of the new 
world, an expression of a new world-order. Her rise was coincident with 
the emergence of a changed State of affairs ; her future must lie with its 
future. For function—that is, service—is the essence of continuity for a 
port; and ports, to be great, besides perpetuating the past, muSt in some 
degree forestall the future. 

Of natural advantages, the ‘ good soil ’, we have our share. Situated 
at a Stream confluence and approached by a long sea-furrow, Southampton 
has a double door opening on a great maritime highway. Not far from 
the centre of Central South England or Wessex as a whole she Stands at 
almost the exaCt centre of the most habitable portion of it. The economic 
bonds which link north-weStern France with southern and central England, 
as well as Southampton’s peculiar ‘ apex ’ position in relation to eaSt-weSt 
communications along the south coaSt, lend this position of centrality 
further significance so that it is basic to much of our modern growth. 
Deep and largely silt-free waters, double tides, and a sheltered posi¬ 
tion permit the largest vessels to approach open quay-sides and to come 
and go almost at will. The natural channel, already roomy, is being 

28 



SOUTHAMPTON: SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


continually improved and widened, while the triangular dock-area—in 
origin a south-pointing confluence spit—gives a maximum of water- 
frontage with minimum transhipment distances for persons and goods. 
Behind this commercial 4 spear-head ’ the town, mounting gentle slopes, 
fills and overflows the larger triangle which lies between the TeSt and the 
Itchen. This triangle, however, is but one sector of the city of the future 
which will occupy probably a circle around a ‘ trivium 5 of rectified and 
improved waterways. Into the heart of this city these waterways will 
admit the sea with its traffic and along the banks will grow and extend 
the Still nascent industrial areas. Provided thus internally with natural 
radial lines, Southampton has radiating from it outwards also a system 
of natural routes leading by easy gradients in all directions of commercial 
importance. 

So long as Southampton was merely a channel port its prosperity 
was never secure. Its geographical advantages brought it fortune from 
time to time but its trade was jeopardized by political and commercial 
changes, by wars, piracy, the rivalry of other ports, and even by geo¬ 
graphical discovery. 1 So long, moreover, as England ‘faced’ mainly 
eaSt, London, the capital and Strategic centre, held also a unique commercial 
position. From three segments of a circle land-lines led to and from her : 
upon the fourth, her ‘ water-V ’, converged maritime routes from the 
known world. With the rise of industrialism and of economic and popu¬ 
lation potential upon the Continent came the rise, or renascence, of 
Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp and similar ports and the progressive 
liberation of Continental trade from intermediate control. With the 
growing industrialization of north-eaStern United States and eastern 
Canada came the intensification of trans-Atlantic traffic. An industrialized 
north Britain, with its corollary of ‘ colonial ’ raw-producing areas, 
demanded vigorous ports such as Liverpool, Glasgow, and others, and 
Stimulated also the movement of British folk across the seas. England 
thus took a half-right turn ; keeping open her doors to the Continent, she 
re-orientated herself towards the west and south. On world-routes she 
remained well placed, for these Still had a north-eaSt Atlantic focus or 
trend. Well forward as an outpoSt for enterprise, she now faced a larger 
world. 


1 In the seventeenth century the very basis of the port’s modem success was held to be a permanent 
disadvantage. Southampton Water had few special attraftions for vessels relying on sail, which found 
other Channel ports more convenient. 


2 9 






SOUTHAMPTON: SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


Of these processes Southampton is an outcome and a symbol: in 
their issue her future muSt be sought. . Like the apex of a pyramidal wave, 
prosperity may express the culmination of convergent forces. Of these 
forces we muSt ask are they permanent, have they latent Strength and 
continuity ? Or are they, mobile, moving to other combinations—spent, 
involved in dissolution ? The analysis requires consideration of four 
aspects each charafteriStic of Southampton’s growth and present State. 

Passenger Traffic .—It was the advent of the ocean liner which estab¬ 
lished the supremacy of Southampton as a passenger port, and the liner 
was a symptom of the new order. With the expansion and increasing 
complexity and mobility of population and international trade time, and 
time-keeping, acquired a new significance. Time in effeft became a 
commodity, limited in supply but in unlimited demand. For ship, 
passenger and cargo time spells money, and even a tourist’s time is apt 
to be measured against ambition. And time, in terms of space, is expressed 
as geographical position. Between the two power-houses of the new 
world, north-wegtern Europe and north-eastern America, England holds 
a Strategic position. And in England the south—and in the south 
Southampton—lies full in the zone of highest traffic potential that skirts 
the north-weStern European shores {Fig. i). Linked with London, the 
passenger centre and commercial clearing-house of the British Isles as 
well as of a considerable Continental hinterland, Southampton is yet placed 
to compete with ocean traffic visiting the Continent direft. And to this 
dual advantage she adds a position neither too far landward nor seaward 
of the ocean-frontier of Europe—a matter of importance for a passenger 
port—and also one favourable for independent traffic with cross-Channel 
ports and the Channel Islands. 

Naturally enough, therefore, when these potentialities were realized, 
there grew up an organization represented on land mainly by the Southern 
Railway and at sea by some thirty or more British and foreign shipping 
fines plying ocean routes from New Zealand and the EaSt Indies to the 
North Sea, from the North Sea to Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Vancouver. 
Pifture the vaSt network and organization—this mechanism material and 
human—so wide that it spans the earth, so delicate that it counts in 
minutes. Here indeed is the miracle of human enterprise, a humanism 
of modern trade. To-day with 36 per cent, of the United Kingdom ocean 
traffic besides a considerable Continental, Channel Islands and trooping 


3i 



WESSEX 


service, Southampton Stands in the front rank among passenger ports 
while recent years have witnessed a continual accession of vessels and 
lines and an extension of the area served. 1 

Of the future who can speak with certainty ? But Southampton’s 
position seems reasonably assured. Ambitious schemes for new liner 
tonnage are in progress or contemplation and will doubtless prove justified 
when trade and prosperity revive. 3 But competition will be severe and 
the competitive capacity of ports will be tested. In Great Britain London 
is scarcely a competitor: she is a special case and so far as concerns 
Southampton, the relationship in general is mutually complementary. 
The northern and western ports—including Cardiff if the interesting 
experiments of the Great Western Railway bear fruit—serve in most 
areas large * immediate ’ populations ; their emigrant traffic will probably 
ultimately revive, but they are now off the main passenger-Stream. So, 
too, the southern and eastern ports, despite their advantages for special 
purposes, have no such combination of qualities as has Southampton. 
With the Continental ports the case is rather different. Continental trade is 
growing in volume, independence and direftness: the ports are improving, 
expanding, differentiating. Though the flow of peoples to the United 
States is largely Stemmed, other overseas countries will probably absorb 
increasing numbers. Hamburg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Cherbourg and 
others are showing energy and enterprise and are effedfing coStly improve¬ 
ments. Cherbourg is ideally placed for diredt trans-Atlantic passenger 
traffic with the Continent and its advance in recent years has been remark¬ 
able, though it may be regarded as co-operating with, quite as much as 
rivalling, Southampton in respedf of passenger trade. 3 Southampton’s 
future, it may be hazarded, depends partly on the continuing pre-eminence 
of London as a commercial, financial and passenger-traffic centre ; partly 
on the diversion, or retention, of tourist traffic to and in these islands ; 


1 In 1929 the net tonnage entering the port was c. 14.95 mill. (cf. London: c. 28.8 mill.; Liverpool: 
c. 17.4 mill.), the total number of passengers, 537,500 (exclusive of troops) (cf. London : 300,000). Some 
44 per cent, of this traffic was with other parts of the British Empire. The total movement of troops 
averaged (3 years : 1925-7) 48,000 annually and it is Stated that the whole British army passes through 
Southampton once in seven years. 

2 At present the important North Atlantic passenger traffic, though not declining, has not recovered 
its pre-war level and ‘ additional express Steamers ’, instead of attra&iug more traffic, ‘ are simply robbing 
the other Steamers already in the trade ’. Emigrant traffic from Great Britain is also likely for some time 
to remain relatively low. 

3 In the period 1913-25 Cherbourg’s tonnage increased by 239 per cent, and amounted, in 1925, 
to 10.93 mill, (net)- In I 9 2 9 the (net) tonnage was 11.5 mill, and the total number of passengers 
211,500. 


32 



SOUTHAMPTON: SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


partly on the competitive facilities offered by the port itself, 1 but above all 
upon the growth and development of the human and social fabric of the 
British Empire. 

Cargo Trade. —Southampton’s cargo trade, though not comparable 
with that of London and Liverpool, in 1928 ranked third and, over the 
eight-year period 1921-8, fourth 2 in value amongSt that of United King¬ 
dom ports. Modern Southampton, as we have seen, is the child of modern 
transport which, in a world of changed regional economic values, re¬ 
discovered its geographical potentialities and gave them a new vitality 
and range. The port’s cargo trade is dire&ly associated with this fad. 
The liner, designed for human transport, was adapted, or adaptable, for 
other freight also. Speed, safety, and, above all, time-table regularity 
were novel assets and, if the cargo space available was at first small, the 
vessels were large, increasing in size, and capable of readjustment. To 
types of goods which demanded prompt and safe delivery—goods gener¬ 
ally of high value in proportion to bulk—the advent of cold Storage and 
other special facilities added bulkier cargoes of similar description while 
the tendency towards specialization and diversification—towards con¬ 
signment in smaller varied ‘ parcels ’—acted in the same direction. Thus 
to mails, bullion, gems, oStrich feathers—typical liner-cargoes—-were 
added in increasing quantities fruit, meat, dairy produce and similar 
produ&s, and to these again, by a natural extension, wool, hides and skins, 
grain and flour, sugar, timber produfts and other relatively non- 
perishable commodities. To-day the liner has become a regular general 
cargo carrier and a formidable competitor in the world’s cargo trade. * 

Moreover, cross-Channel passenger traffic found its counterpart in 
the valuable seasonal trade in fruit, flowers and vegetables deriving from 

1 Important in this connexion is the Southampton Docks extension scheme, under which 3,500 feet 

will be added by 1931-2, and ultimately 15,500 feet (i.e. some two miles of river frontage), to the existing 
21,200 feet of berthing space for large vessels, together with corresponding Storage and railway facilities 
and sites for industrial development. Further, the plans of the Southampton Harbour Board aim at an 
uninterrupted fairway to the sea of 1,000 feet width and 35 feet—finally, possibly, 40 feet—depth l.w. 
o.s.t., towards which end the recendy approved dredging scheme represents a substantial Step. 

2 The ports with which Southampton has been compared are London, Liverpool, Manchester, 
Glasgow, Hull; the trade compared is the value of imports, exports (including re-exports of imported 
o-oods), and cargo transhipped under bond. Coastal trade is not included ; but in respect of tonnage 
engaged in this trade Southampton, in 1928, Stood fourth (3.066 mill, tons) juSt after Glasgow (3.330 
mill. tons). 

» Apart from liner-cargo trade, we may distinguish (a) general ‘ tramp ’-cargo trade (e.g. coal out¬ 
wards ; wheat, timber, or ores inwards), (h) special trade carried increasingly in special vessels (e.g. 
oil-tankers). Southampton, in virtue of its own growth and that of its hinterland, is attracting a certain 
amount of both types. 


33 




>iagram 2. Trade Stability: Comparison of certain U.K. Ports, 1921-1928. 


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SOUTHAMPTON: SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


the intensively productive areas of Normandy, Brittany, the Channel 
Islands and even Spain and the Canaries. 1 Similarly exports, whether 
from the Midland, Northern or London manufacturing areas, are of the 
liner-cargo type, and of the export trade an important branch, significant 
in view of Southampton’s special position, is her ‘ transit ’ trade. This 
during recent years has made remarkable progress, and now far exceeds in 
value that of any other United Kingdom port. 2 The world-wide system 
of routes and services radiating from the port, together with the proximity 
of Continental manufacturing areas, have contributed to this result. 
Goods sent by express services catch in Southampton the outgoing 
liners and, often within a few hours of despatch, are under way to distant 
parts of the world. 

In all this traffic two features are especially noteworthy : despatch and 
relative Stability. The same organization, the same features of swiftness, 
smoothness and flexibility, that characterize and are implied in the success 
of passenger services—whether by land or by sea, by railway or by ship— 
have also served the purposes of the port’s special cargo trade and are 
indeed of its very essence and spirit. In the second place, the well-known 
Steadiness of liner trade relative to other types is clearly reflected in the 
cargo trade of Southampton. Seasonal but diversified, it avoids the 
large-scale fluctuations—great peaks and deep depressions—which affeCt 
some other ports and it preserves a more Stable and equable mien {Fig. 2). 
As regards the future the cargo trade of Southampton is doubtless bound 
up largely with the passenger traffic. This, as we have seen, may be 
considered reasonably secure, though competition, and particularly the 
growing independence of Continental ports, may operate to modify the 
position. Part of the port’s trade, however, is due to the development of 
the town and district, whether for industrial or for ordinary settlement 
purposes, and to these aspeCts we must therefore turn. 

Industrial Development .—So long as cheap power was synonymous 
with cheap coal, Southampton was relatively unfavourably placed. For 
many years, however, she has been developing her eleCtrical supply and 
her Undertaking has recently been named as one of the six selected generat- 
int Stations for south-weSt England and south Wales, while a further 

1 In 1927 some 35 per cent, of the total imports at the Docks came from France and the Channel 
Islands. 

2 For the five-year period 1924-8, it represented in value 42 per cent, of the total transhipment 
trade of the United Kingdom, and amounted in 1927 to nearly £33,500,000. 


35 





WESSEX 


Station will probably be sited on or near Southampton Water by about 
1938. Add to this the now established use of oil for fuel and power, 1 
and it is evident that the position as regards power-supply is radically 
changed. Shipbuilding and repairing, 1 3 * * * * engineering and air-craft manu¬ 
facture are firmly rooted and flourishing. Eledtric cable, heavy electrical, 
tobacco, saw-milling, seed-crushing, margarine and many other industries 
are established and will probably increase. Many of these are small but 
in the aggregate they are attaining importance. 8 Normally, moreover, 
the industries of a general cargo port are diversified; and, here again, 
diversity—‘ many baskets ’—is apt to imply Stability. 

As for the future, England is an old and long-induStrialized country. 
But while industrial ‘ inertia ’, and vested interests, muSt be reckoned with, 
their influence can also be exaggerated. The development of new 
industries in southern England has been notable, and has already affeCfced 
Southampton. There seems no reason why this growth should not 
continue and even develop a certain ‘ snowball ’ quality. For here also 
Southampton perhaps Stands to gain more than moSt by the economic 
development of the Empire and the growth of inter-imperial trade. 

Distributive Function .—Lastly there is Southampton’s function as a 
distributing centre, the growth of its regional influence and control. 
Central position and a radial system of easy routes facilitate movement 
in all directions, for even the Isle of Wight in certain respeCts falls within 
its sphere. At the same time motor-transport has greatly enlarged the 
possibilities of intercourse especially in point of intensity and flexibility. 
Three zones may be distinguished in the hinterland, though their boun¬ 
daries, and respective areas, are Still indefinite. In her immediate environ¬ 
ment the influence of Southampton may be gauged from the development 
of her public-utility services, in particular those of eleCtricity and water- 
supply. These exhibit a Steady expansion, together with centralization 
of distributive control.* The population is increasing and the services 

1 In 1927, Southampton Stood sixth amongst United Kingdom oil-importing ports, with 
petroleum imports of c. 142,390,000 gallons valued at £2,634,000. 

1 The yacht industry alone, it is estimated, brings to the port an annual revenue of £1,000,000. 

3 The Southampton Corporation Ele&ricity Undertaking supplies (1930) over 450 factories from 

its mains. 

* The Southampton Corporation Ele&ricity Undertaking supplied in 1920, c. 15.7 square miles ; 

by 1930 the area served had increased to 256 square miles (population c. 230,000). The Southampton 

Corporation Waterworks supplied, in 1907, c. 4 mill, gallons (average) daily ; in 1930, c. 8. 95 mill, 
gallons, to a population of nearly 275,000 spread over some 220 square miles, and further extensive 

development is anticipated. 


36 






SOUTHAMPTON: SOME ASPECTS OF ITS GROWTH 
AND PROSPERITY 


mentioned afford at least indications of the general trend. In the outer¬ 
most zone lie the North, the Midlands and, most important, London to 
which Southampton is in some senses an outport. With this hinterland 
the trade is mainly specialized or specific, and it can hardly, it seems, fail 
to expand. 1 

Finally, in the intermediate zone Southampton possesses a hinterland 
of peculiar regional importance. Falling mainly within a radius of about 
forty miles it is an area of general supply, though ‘ specific ’ trade is not 
excluded. The boundaries appear to extend farther weSt and north-weft 
than towards London and although it is not uniformly densely populated 
it is an area which is developing. It is relatively remote from other large 
distributive centres and it has probably a fairly high absorptive capacity. 
The choice of Southampton, therefore, as a distributing centre by several 
important firms in recent years is understandable, and there can be little 
doubt that this function of the town and port is destined to extend. 

Note : A general acknowledgment is made of various published works used in the’preparation 
of the above and also of information courteously supplied by various Borough Authorities, by the 
Southampton Harbour Board, and in particular by the Docks and Marine Manager, Southern Railway, 
Southampton. 

O. H. T. RISHBETH. 


1 Approximately 50 per cent, of the cargo landed at Southampton Docks goes to London; a 
fluftuating quantity —sometimes as much as 30 per cent.—goes north (Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool). 
Of wool imports, 50 per cent, is railed to Yorkshire (Bradford) ; the remaining 50 per cent., besides 
hides, skins, etc., are transhipped to Continental ports. In recent years Southampton has captured a 
certain amount of the Port of London’s trade, since the landing of cargo here saves some twelve 
hours over the circuitous route via Tilbury. 











THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN SOUTHAMPTON 


P LYMOUTH ROCK. It is probable that the memory of the last 
place where the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 touched their 
native land inspired this name for the first place where their feet 
Stood in the New World, their future home. And so the name Plymouth 
was given to the infant colony which was to form the nucleus of New 



England. Yet that name, so famous in the annals of a great nation, might 
have been ‘ Southampton Rock ’, but for chance and the treachery of a 
hired captain. For it was from Southampton that the Pilgrim Fathers 
planned to start on their great venture, and it was from Southampton 
that the first Start was actually made. The Hampshire port should 
therefore have an equal share with Plymouth in the honoured records 
of the American nation, and members and friends of a University of 
Wessex centred at Southampton should not be unwilling to have the fafts 
recalled to their memories. 

It is unnecessary to recapitulate at length the well-known origins of 
the famous voyage of 1620. Primarily it was due to religious intolerance. 
The Reformation had freed England from one tyranny only to subj eft it 
to another. As in the rest of XVIIth century Europe there was as yet no 
liberty of religious opinion and worship for individuals. A half-way house 
had been reached in which each State could choose its own form of religion, 
but within each State rigid uniformity was Still enforced owing to the 
prevalent idea that only so could political Stability and national unity be 
conserved. In England this new tyranny was especially severe, for the 
reigning King and the Bishops of the Established Church had joined 
forces to oppose religious reformers who too often denied the divine 

38 










THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN SOUTHAMPTON 


hereditary right of the former and the divinely ordained authority of the 
latter. Hence the harsh persecution of all Puritans, moderate as well as 
extreme. Hence inevitably the consolidation in opposition to tyranny 
of all grades of Puritans, a consolidation which eventually coSt Charles I 
his throne. And hence more immediately the exodus from England of 
many in search of toleration elsewhere. 

If Southampton and Plymouth share the honours as respectively the 
original and final ports of embarkation for the famous voyage of 1620, 
Scrooby in Nottinghamshire has no rival for the honour of being the first 
home of the particular body of Puritans which sailed in the Mayflower. 
This came about, not because the district was especially Puritan in tone, 
but because it became the centre of religious activity of the two men, 
William BrewSter and John Robinson, who were the mainsprings of the 
movement. The little village of Scrooby owed any importance it pos¬ 
sessed to its position on the Great North Road, the main route from 
London to Scotland. In the ancient Manor House BrewSter’s father was 
installed in 1576 as ‘PoStmaSter’ for Government dispatches. On his 
father’s death in 1590 William Brewster succeeded his father as PoStmaSter 
and it was then that his religious activities began. He was not only 
himself very aftive in spreading the new religious ideas, but he also secured 
the assistance of other preachers of advanced views. Chief among these 
was John Robinson, who—like BrewSter himself—had been educated at 
Puritan Cambridge, who had taken Holy Orders, who had been suspended 
for encouraging noncomformity, and who finally joined forces with 
BrewSter to form the congregation centred at the Manor House which 
formed the nucleus of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

‘ I will harry you out of the land ’. Such was the threat of James I 
to those who openly refused to conform to the rigid uniformity then 
demanded. The future Pilgrim Fathers, by openly forming at Scrooby 
in 1606 a separatist congregation, were therefore subject to the severest 
persecution. In the words of William Bradford, their chief contemporary 
historian they were ‘ hunted and persecuted on every side . . . and ye 
most were faine to flie and leave their houses and habitations and the means 
of their livelehood ’. Whither could they fly ? There was only one 
possible country near at hand, the Dutch Netherlands, the inhabitants of 
which had learnt to be tolerant through their own sufferings at the hands of 
Spain, and which was therefore the natural refuge for all persecuted 
Protestants. Thither the Puritans of Scrooby escaped one by one, and by 
about August 1608 were once more united as a congregation in Amsterdam. 
Simple agricultural folk like the Pilgrim Fathers found a big business city 

39 





WESSEX 


uncongenial and so in the following May they settled in the quieter 
University town of Leyden, where they lived for some eight years. But 
there were many drawbacks even there. There was the difficulty of 
gaining a livelihood. There were also the dangers to their children, 
physical dangers owing to the hardness of their life, and moral dangers, 
real or fancied, owing to the different conventions—e.g. as to Sunday 
amusements—held by the Dutch. Above all the Puritans feared being 


I 



absorbed into the Dutch nation. For though exiled, they Still retained 
their love of their native country, and so about 1617 they determined to 
seek a new home where they could Still be under the English flag, and yet 
enjoy religious freedom. Where should they go ? The already established 
English colony of Virginia held great possibilities, but there, as in En g lan d, 
there was no real religious toleration. To settle far away from the pos¬ 
sibility of government protection was dangerous, so in the end a compro¬ 
mise was reached and it was decided to settle in some unoccupied part of 


40 















THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN SOUTHAMPTON 


the wide domains which lay within the general jurisdiction of the Virginia 
Company. Two members of the congregation. Carver and Cushman, 
were sent to England in September 1617 to negotiate, armed with a 
Declaration of Faith skilfully drawn up by Robinson to conciliate opposi¬ 
tion. The King was induced to give an informal sanftion to the venture ; 
the Virginia Company by June 1619 at length issued a patent authorising 
the colony ; and early in 1620 after many vain attempts to colled; funds, 
some 70 Merchant Adventurers of London, headed by one John WeSton, 
agreed to provide the capital required, though on such high terms as 
promised to embarrass the colonists financially for some time. With 
this capital one ship of 60 tons, the Speedwell , was bought outright with the 
idea of keeping it in the colony for fishing and trading. A bigger ship of 
180 tons, the Mayflower , was hired in London. The Speedwell was to 
transport the Pilgrims from Holland to Southampton, where the May¬ 
flower was to meet them with provisions and Stores. On August iSt, 1620 
the younger members of the congregation under BrewSter set sail from 
Holland, the older members waiting at Leyden till a first trial of the New 
World had been made. It is sad to remember that Robinson died without 
ever seeing the colony which'he had done so much to inspire. 

The Pilgrim Fathers were now at Southampton, ready for the great 
voyage. There were unforeseen difficulties to be faced. John Weston 
and the ‘ Adventurers ’ were claiming Still higher terms, the Pilgrims had 
to sell some of their Store of butter to meet expenses, and they were forced 
to Start short of many necessaries. Also, after a Start was arranged for 
August 8th Captain Reynolds of the Speedwell reported a leak, and this 
caused a delay of a week. There was one compensation for this 
which particularly affefts Southampton. During the delay a valuable 
recruit was gained in the person of John Alden. It is not known for 
certain if John Alden was a native of Southampton. The family is 
supposed to belong to Chipping Sodbury in Gloucester, but there is at 
leaSt a possibility that some of its members migrated to Southampton, for 
in the only surviving contemporary Church register—that of St. Michael’s 
—there appears under the date ‘ Apprell 30th, 1598’, the entry of the burial 
of ‘ Rychard Alden ’. At any rate we know that John Alden, who was to 
become such a prominent member of the new colony, joined the company 
at Southampton. An entry in Bradford’s list of the Mayflower passengers 
reads ‘ John Alden was hired for a cooper at South-Hampton, where the 
ship vi&uled ; and being a hopeful young man was much desired, but left 
to his owne liking to go, or Stay when he came here, but he Stayed, and 
maryed here ’. 


4i 







WESSEX 


At length everything was ready and on August 15 th 1620 the May¬ 
flower and Speedwell set off from the WeSt Quay. And then came the sad 
happening which robbed Southampton of the honour of being the only 
port of departure for the Pilgrim Fathers. Of the 120 Pilgrims who set 
sail from Southampton, 90 were on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell. 
Captain Reynolds of the smaller vessel had made an agreement to serve 
the Pilgrims for a year, but he lost confidence in the venture, and he was 
afraid left in a Stormy voyage the little Speedwell would be deserted by the 
larger Mayflower. So he determined to prevent the Speedwell from making 
the voyage, and he did this so skilfully that no suspicion of his good faith 



was aroused. He had his first chance soon after the Start. Southampton 
Water was left with a favourable wind, but no sooner had the Channel been 
reached when a westerly gale sprung up. This gave Reynolds the chance 
to report that his labouring ship had sprung a leak, and that she must be 
taken back to be overhauled. There was enough of truth behind his 
deception to secure him from detection, for the Speedwell was overmasted 
and inclined to Strain her hull in a Stiff breeze. She was quite fit for the 
voyage with careful management, but Reynolds had no intention of doing 
his beSt for the ship, and indeed had determined to use his knowledge of 
the Speedwell’s peculiarities so as to frighten the Pilgrims into abandoning 


42 
















THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN SOUTHAMPTON 


her. His plan succeeded. On the eighth day from their departure from 
Southampton the two ships put into Dartmouth and the Speedwell was there 
thoroughly overhauled. About the beginning of September a second 
Start was made. Reynolds was aStute enough not to repeat his Stratagem 
too soon. He allowed the two vessels to sail nearly 300 miles across the 
Atlantic before he again raised the alarm, and declared that the Speedwell 
muSt either return to port for repairs or sink at sea. After a depressing 
consultation on board the Mayflower a return was ordered and the vessels 



reached Plymouth about September 10th. The Speedwell was again 
overhauled and found to have no special leak. This should have made 
evident the treachery of Reynolds, but as a fa ft he gained his end from the 
simple Pilgrims, for they were afraid to trust the Speedwell any more, 
and decided to abandon her. She was sent to London to be sold, and 
after being refitted made many voyages in perfect safety. 

So now there was left only the Mayflower, ready to Start alone on the 
famous voyage, and this time from Plymouth instead of from Southampton. 
Of the 120 Pilgrims who had Started from Southampton 18 gave up the 


43 










WESSEX 


venture, some like Cushman because they were disheartened by the 
delay; others because of weak health or the burden of young children. 
So it was the famous 102 Pilgrims of Bradford’s lift which finally resumed 
the voyage on September 16th. On the voyage one man died, but a 
child was born and named Oceanus, so it was 102 souls who, after a long 
and ftormy crossing of the Atlantic, finally reached the New World. The 
aim had been to land in the domain of the Virginia Company, somewhere 
between the Hudson and the Delaware, but fate again ftepped in to alter 
their plan. It is a possibility that the Captain was secretly in the pay of 
the Dutch who were eftablishing a trading colony on the Hudson and did 
not want rivals. Anyway the Captain professed to be unable to sail 
farther southward againft a contrary wind, and so after beating up and down 
the coaft for a month they finally selefted a spot‘ fit for situation ’, and on 
December 21ft the firft Pilgrim set foot on the famous Plymouth Rock. 
The firft man to land is said to have been John Alden, the Southampton 
cooper. If this be so it may serve as a fitting illuftration of the equal 
connection with the famous voyage of the two great ports of Wessex and 
the South Weft. 

E. S. LYTTEL. 



NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 


These are from pen and ink sketches by Bernard C. Gotch. 

Southampton in 1620 was mostly enclosed by walls, with but few dw ellin gs outside. 
At the angles of the walls were towers, of which the only one which is Still fully preserved 
and visible is the South-Eatt Tower, or God’s House Tower (page 38). This was built 


44 











THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN SOUTHAMPTON 


in the XVth century to protect the flood-gate of the moat which ran along the Eastern 
wall. 

Of the gates giving entrance to the walled town there are three Still remaining. 
The most important entrance was the North or Bar Gate (page 40). In 1620 this gate 
had no side openings as now, and the two guarding lions were of wood instead of lead. 
The other two remaining gates are God’s House Gate and the Weft Gate (page 42). 
The two additional gates which existed in 1620 were the EaSt Gate in the present 
EaSt Street, and the South or Water Gate, at the bottom of the present High Street. 

There were two main Quays, the Water Quay, beyond the South or Water Gate, 
and the WeSt Quay. The latter was the older, the bigger and the more sheltered. It 
is most probable that it was from this quay that the Mayflower and Speedwell set sail. 
Facing this quay there now Stands the Pilgrim Fathers Memorial (page 43) erefted in 
1920. 

In 1620 no roadway ran between the sea and the walls. The picturesque arcading 
of the Walls on the Weft Quay (page 44) was not made for effect but to economise Stone 
in a wall which had to be sufficiently thick to enable a guard to patrol the top. 


THE EAST WIND 
by Trelawney Dayrell Reed 

T HE EaSt Wind is hurrying by. 

And his breath has dimmed the sky 

Swift on frozen silver feet 

He treads the shuddering fields of wheat. 

Fledglings, huddle in your neSt 
Close to your warm mother’s breaSt; 

And each wild flower shut his eye 
While the EaSt Wind passes by. 

Meet him, Blackthorn Brake alone. 

With kisses colder than his own. 


45 




SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


(A paper read to the Southampton Branch of the English Association) 

T HAT I should have chosen Sir Bevis of Ham tom as the subject of a 
paper for the English Association augurs, I think, no small degree 
of courage, not to say temerity, on my part. For is not Sir Bevis 
included in that familiar Stanza of Chaucer’s which rings in my ears as 
I begin: 

Men speken of romauns of prys 
Of Hornchild, and of Ypotis 
Of Beves, and of Sir Gy, 

Of sir Lybeux and Plein-damour; 

But sir Thopas, he bereth the flour 
Of roial chivalry : 

and I have the uneasy feeling that the even tenor of my remarks may be 
broken by some modern Harry Bailey in my audience with the words :— 

Na moore of this, for Goddes dignitee ! 

. . . for thou makeSt me 
So wery of thy verray lewednesse 
That, also wisly God my soule blesse, 

Min eres aken of thy draSty speche ! 

But I take courage as I refleft that I am speaking to the fellow-citizens of 
Sir Bevis, who may be expe&ed to show more sympathy and appreciation 
for the idiosyncrasies of their most famous townsman than mine hoSt of 
the Tabard and his companions in suffering. Besides, though in Chaucer’s 
opinion (which was doubtless far from impartial), Sir Thopas ‘ bore the 
prize ’, it is open to any one to urge that the palm ought to have been 
awarded to Sir Bevis, and that Chaucer has been guilty of a serious mis¬ 
carriage of justice. In favour of this view of the case is the unbroken 
popularity of Sir Bevis from the thirteenth century down almost to our 
own day; witness the preface of the late seventeenth century editor 
of a prose version from the Auchinleck MS. 1689) :— 

‘ Courteous Reader,—I here present you with the pleasant History 
of the Famous and Renowned Knight, Sir Bevis of South Hamtoun, a 

46 



SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


man for his Virtue and Valour highly esteemed throughout the world: 
In whose many Actions and glorious Achievements you will find things 
that may reasonably surmount an ordinary credit; however, in perusing 
them, you may plainly perceive the difference between Elder times and 
these we live in, which are too much devolved into effeminacy, and please 
yourself in consulting the many rare adventures of such as gave themselves 
up to the pra&ice of Arms and Love, which being mingled in their many 
Excellences, appear as beautiful and gay as a bed of Roses and Lillies in 
their blushing glory and innocent candure, and as the noble Enterprises of 
others have Stirred up the Spirits of such as read them, to an illustrious 
imitation of what is truly great, and held in the highest esteem : So, past 
all peradventure what is here laid down will not come behind the most 
exalted Actions of Heroes, set forth to the advantage either in Love_ or 
Arms, those two excellencies that adorn mankind : for here you will find 
our Champion, though early crushed by the adverse hand of Fortune, 
making his way to glory before he could aspire to manhood, cutting it by 
Dint of Valour and Heroick Conduct from a dejected State by degrees till 
he mounts to the highest pinnacle of Honour, in rescuing the distressed, 
destroying Monsters and Tyrants, gaining Kingdoms, and converting 
Infidels to the Christian Faith, obleiging by his Affability and excellent 
parts Queens and Princesses to lay their Diadems and Grandure at his feet 
and doing such things as have amazed Mankind. Therefore, for the 
honour of our Country, of which he has so well deserved, let his Memory 
live in the thoughts of every true English man, and be to them a pattern 
of Heroick Virtue, that by imitating him, they may raise the very name of 
the British Empire, as formerly it was, to be the Terror of the World, 
which is the wish, 

‘ Reader, 

‘ Of your most 

‘ Humble Servant 

Words such as these are surely calculated to rehabilitate the old 
romance in our esteem. 

Before giving you a synopsis of the Story of Sir Bevis, it would be 
tempting to digress upon the history of the medieval romances, and to 
tell the tale of how about the year 1200 French literature came to dominate 
the whole of Christendom in the matter of Stories ; not only sending 
abroad the French tales of Charlemagne and Roland, but importing plots, 
scenery and so forth from many lands, Wales and Brittany, Greece and 

47 





WESSEX 


the farther EaSt, and giving new French forms to them, which were 
admired and, as far as possible, borrowed by foreign nations, the English 
among others. But has not the tale been already told by Warton in the 
two dissertations prefixed to his Hiflory of 'English Poetry , by Gaston Paris 
in his French Medieval Eiterature, by Professor W. P. Ker in his 
Epic and Romance, by Professor Scofield in his English Eiterature after the 
Nor/nan Conqueli, and by a host of other scholars, English and Continental ? 
To their labours and lucubrations I refer you for details. 

All that need be said at this point is that it would have been a miracle 
if Bevis had not been popular, because, as Professor W. P. Ker has pointed 
out, it is perhaps the beSt example of the ordinary popular tale, the medieval 
book of chivalry with all the right things in it. As he says, it might have 
been produced in the same way as The Knight of the Burning Peflle, by 
allowing the audience to prescribe what was required. ‘ The hero’s 
father is murdered like Hamlet’s ; the hero is disinherited like Horn; 
he is wooed by a fair Paynim princess, like Sir Gy in Ferumbras ; 
like Hamlet again, he carries a treacherous letter, “ and beareth with him 
his own death ” ; he is separated from his wife and children, like Sir 
EuStace and Sir Isumbras ; and exiled, like Huon of Bordeaux, for causing 
the death of the king’s son ’. Moreover, the slaughter of Saracens, fights 
with dragons and giants, wondrous magic mirrors and wells of healing, 
are introduced on a scale calculated to satisfy the robuSt appetite of an 
English audience, always less careful of Style and ornament than their 
French compeers. It is significant of this difference of taste that the one 
great defect of the French original of Sir Bevis —the absence of a dragon— 
is made good in the English version. 

The romance opens with a description of the hero’s father. Sir Guy 
—a mighty man, the Strongest in his day, whose arm none could withstand: 

Of Hamtoun he was sire 
And of that ilche schire 
to wardi 

Lordinges this of whom y telle 
Neuer man of flesch ne felle 
Nas so Strong, 

for all he lived without wine or Strong drink. Unfortunately he does not 
marry until he is old and feeble. Then he decides to marry the daughter 
of the King of Scotland, who was young and fair to look upon. But Sir 
Guy knew not that his lady’s heart was already given to Davoun, the 

48 




SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


Emperor of Almaine. However, a son is born to Sir Guy, ‘ fair child 
he was and bold ; a fairer child was never born since God sprang from the 
root of Jesse, nor one doughtier in battle Soon the lady wearies of her 
old and pious husband and plots his death. She sends a messenger to the 
Emperor of Almaine, urging him to come to England on the first of May 
to a forest beside the sea and to kill her husband, whom she will send 
there. When this is done, she says, the Emperor shall have her love. 
The Emperor gladly consents. Sir Guy’s wife pretends to be ill and 
expresses a desire for the flesh of a wild swine. Sir Guy rides off unarmed 
with but three attendants to hunt the boar, and is met and slain after a 
fierce Struggle by the Emperor and his knights. 

Bevis, who was but seven years at his father’s death, makes unceasing 
lament and refuses to be comforted. He reproaches his mother with her 
heartlessness and calls her a ‘ vile whore ’. 

Ac o thing, moder, i schel the swere : 
yif ich ever armes here 
and be of eide, 

A 1 that hath me fader islawe 
And ibrought of is lif dawe, 

Ich schel him yilden. 

She boxes his ears so that he falls down; and she orders Saber, her son’s 
foster-father, to murder him. Like Grim in the Lay of Havelok the Bane , 
Saber does not refuse, but in order to deceive her Saber kills a pig, sprinkles 
the garments of Bevis with its blood, and sends Bevis in the dress of a 
poor herd to mind his sheep. The sounds of the revelry in the palace 
reach Bevis in the fields. Unable to restrain himself, he enters the hall, 
and claims his heritage from the Emperor. He Strikes the Emperor, who 
faints. Bevis is finally captured and sold by his mother for a large sum 
to heathen merchants, and we are told that 

The childes hertte was wel colde 
For that he was so fer isolde. 

When the merchants arrived in Heathenesse, they took Bevis, and, 
because he was a handsome and Stalwart lad, they presented him ^to the 
King of that land whose name was Ermyn. Now King Ermyn’s wife 
was dead, but he had a young daughter whose name was Josyan. 


49 




WESSEX 


Hire schon wer gold vpon hire fet: 

So faire yhe was and bright of mod, 

Ase snow vpon the rede blod ; 

Wharto scholde that may (maiden) discriue ? 

Men siSte no fairer thing alive. 

So hende ne wel itaught. 

Josyan has but one fault—she was a pagan and knew not Christian laws. 

King Ermyrt grew to love Bevis as his own son and said, c Stay with 
me, boy, in Ermony—I have no heir but Josyan to come after me ; and 
when you are both grown I will give her to thee to wife and with her, 
all my land and all my wealth and you shall rule the country after me, if 
only you will forsake your Christian God and take my Lord, Apollyon, 
for your god ’. 

But Bevis answers resolutely, c Fore God—not for all the silver and 
gold that is under the light of heaven, nor for thy daughter, that is so fair, 
would I forsake Jesus who redeemed me at so great cost—and what is 
more, may all be damned and deaf who believe on the false gods ’. How¬ 
ever, King Ermyn liked Bevis all the better for his loyalty and made him 
his chamberlain. So he grew in favour with God and women—particularly 
with Josyan, who loved him dearly in her heart. She told herself in 
secret' : Might I but once kiss Bevis in love, I should reck not of the 
remainder of this world’s bliss. In happy time were that maiden born, 
whom Bevis should choose for his leman ’. It is Josyan who nurses 
Bevis back to health after the wounds received in his first battle, where 
single-handed on his famous Steed Arundel ( £ Swallow ’)—a gift from 
King Ermyn—he slays fifteen Saracens. Forty grievous wounds did he 
receive in that battle, but Josyan, skilled like many another medieval 
maiden in leechcraft, anoints his wounds with a precious ointment, so 
that the blood Stanched and the pain left him. 

Bevis’s next feat is to slay a boar of enormous size which no one else 
has been able to kill. On his way back Bevis meets with twenty-fou-r 
knights and ten foresters led by the Steward of King Ermyn’s court, who 
out of envy has plotted his death. Armed with nothing but the boar’s 
head, which he places on the point of his truncheon, Bevis defends 
himself until he wins from the Steward the famous sword Morgelay, 
with which he was afterwards to perform many a valorous deed. 

Three years after the adventure with the boar, there came to the 
court of King Ermyn a Saracen king called Brademond (Brandon), who 
had heard of Josyan’s beauty and came with a great army to demand her 


5° 


SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


in marriage. In her distress, Josyan appeals to Bevis, who is made leader 
of the Armenian army and dubbed a knight :— 

‘ Then they brought him a shield, gold and azure, blazoned with three 
eagles azure, and on the champ of gold five silver sables. By his side he 
girt his good sword Morgelay. And Josyan embroidered him a gay silk 
Standard of rare and curious work to bear for her ; and gave him besides 
a hauberk of rare and curious work, the like of which was never seen— 
and the price of it was worth many a city. So when Bevis had girded on 
his armour, he leapt on the good and leal Steed Arundel, which Josyan 
gave him for her gift, and led King Ermyn’s host to battle; and their 
number was fifty and thirty thousand men with banners bright and 
shining shields ’. 

The host of Brademond is destroyed and the king takes to flight, but 
is taken by Bevis and forced to swear fealty to Ermyn. 

Sir Bevis rides home and is received with joy and honour by Ermyn, 
who seats him above all the lords and ladies of his Court. He calls 
Josyan and says :—‘ “ Unarm thy knight, fair child; and set before him 
meat and drink, and serve and tend on him thyself”. Then was the 
maiden glad and her eyes sparkled brightly because she might wait on 
Bevis ’. 

After Bevis has eaten, Josyan’s love can no longer be restrained and 
she says :—‘ Bevis, loved one, have pity on me. I have loved thee long. 
Unless thou love me, I shall die.’ Bevis answers, ‘ Nay, I cannot. There 
is Brademond who serves Mahomet. Take him as thy mate’. But 
Josyan with a cry of pain replies : ‘ I had liefer have thee to my spouse, 
naked and penniless, than all the gold that Christ hath made. Grant me 
thy love, or I die ’. But Bevis is inexorable. 

‘ Then fell Josyan at his feet and wept sore ’, but presently, Standing 
up, she speaks in scorn through her tears :—‘ Go, base unmannered churl! 
Mohamet with sudden blighting visit thee for this—for there is neither 
king, sultan, nor mighty prince but would feel honoured by my love— 
and now to be despised by a churl—a low born churl ’ ! 

Bevis makes answer, ‘ Better had I died in a ditch, than been dubbed 
knight to make sport for maidens. Mahomet take thee for that word—a 
churl—whose father was both earl and knight! Take back the horse thou 
gaveSt—I will have nothing that is thine, but I will leave thee Straightway 
for my country and never see thy face again ’. With these words he 
leaves her and rides into the town. 

Josyan soon repents of her harsh words. She sends her chamberlain 


5i 





WESSEX 


Boniface to Bevis to make peace ; but though Bevis gives the messenger 
a precious mantle * white as milk, embroidered with silk, and red gold ’, 
he does not relent. Finally Josyan comes to Bevis, who feigns sleep. 
But she goes to his couch and kneeling down beside him, says :— 

‘ Awake, my loved one. I am come myself to make my peace. 
Speak but a word to me ’. Then said Bevis :— c I am tired : let me lie, 
and leave me: go thou home ’. But Josyan will not go :—‘ Nay, 
deareSt: thou shalt first forgive my wrong to thee ’. So she fell down and 
wept upon his breaSt. 

‘ Bevis ’, she cries, ‘ do not forsake me; all my false gods I now 
forswear and turn to Christendom for thy dear sake ’. Bevis is conquered, 
and taking her in his arms he kisses her on the lips, and she departs happy 
in his love. 

But slanderous tongues are soon at work, and King Ermyn is told 
that Bevis has wronged his daughter. A thing on the advice of Bevis’s 
foes, he writes a letter to King Brademond about Bevis, and orders him 
to deliver it to the king without taking with him his sword Morgelay or 
his horse Arundel, or showing the letter to any one. Brademond reads 
the letter and orders Bevis to be cast into a deep dungeon. Here he lies 
for seven long years, half Starved and obliged to defend himself against 
dragons and snakes with a Stick which he found at the prison door. 

Josyan asks her father about Bevis, but is told that he has returned to 
England and married the king’s daughter there. She suspects treachery, 
so when a new lover. King Yvor of Mombraunt, is forced upon her, she 
consents to the marriage, but succeeds in preserving her virginity by a 
charm. 

When seven years have passed, Bevis escapes from prison with the 
help of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin and his own Strong hand. After 
many adventures in which much blood of giants and Saracens is shed, he 
makes his way to Mombraunt in the guise of a palmer. King Yvor is out 
hunting, but Josyan is in her bower. At the gate he finds many pilgrims 
who are waiting for their share of the food, which Josyan is in the habit of 
distributing to poor palmers at midday for the love of a knight called 
Sir Bevis. Bevis enters with the other palmers, and in answer to Josyan’s 
questions professes to be a friend of Sir Bevis, who has told him of a 
horse called Arundel which he wants to see. Like Argus in the Odyssey, 
Arundel knows his master, who is recognized by Josyan. Josyan entreats 
Bevis to take her home with him, and assures him that she is a pure virgin, 
Bevis consents and the lovers leave Mombraunt. Unfortunately King 


52 






SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


Garcy, who is left in charge of Josyan in her lord’s absence, learns of the 
flight of Bevis and Josyan from a magic ring and pursues the fugitives: 
without success however, for they find refuge in a cave. Nest day, in 
the absence of Bevis, who has gone to get some venison for food, two 
lions enter the cave. Fortunately they cannot hurt Josyan, who, like 
themselves, is of royal blood, and is besides a pure virgin. Bevis however 
does not possess the same qualifications, and is attacked by the royal 
beasts on his return. He refuses to allow Josyan to hold one of the lions 
while he engages the other, but attacks both at once and after a furious 
battle he dispatches first the lion and then the lioness. 

But the troubles of the lovers are not over. No sooner has Bevis 
slain the lioness, than they meet a moSt horrible giant, called Ascopart, 
who says that he has been sent by Garcy to fetch back the queen and to 
kill Bevis. Naturally Bevis objects, though Ascopart’s appearance was 
sufficient to dismay another than Bevis :— 

He was wondetliche Strong 
Rome (In length ) thretti fote long; 

His berd was bothe gret & roe; 

A space of a fot betwene is browe 
His clob was, to geue a Strok, 

A lite bodi of an ok. 

Bevis, wondering at the giant, asked if his countrymen were all of 
the same size. Ascopart replied that he had left them since they ill-used 
him and knocked him about because he was so little and weak. Still, he 
thought he could manage ten such men as Bevis. But in the battle which 
ensued, Bevis got the upper hand, and Ascopart’s life was saved only by 
the intercession of Josyan. Ascopart swore fealty to Sir Bevis and became 
his squire. 

The three journey by sea to Cologne, where a cousin of Bevis’s old 
friend Saber was bishop. The bishop welcomed Bevis heartily and 
inquired :—‘ Who is this lovely lady ? ’ 

‘ Sire ’, said Bevis, ‘ a Queen of Heathenesse, who for my sake 
renounces her false gods and comes to christen ’. £ And who is this 

great-faced giant ? ’ ‘ Sire ’, said Bevis, ‘ my page, and him I prithee 

christen with my wife also. 

So next day the bishop christened Josyan, but when he came to push 
Ascopart into the water, the giant leapt anon on a bench, and said:— 
‘ An I must drown or burn. Sir PrieSt, certes I will not drown. There is 


53 






WESSEX 


too much of me to christen ; so me let be, for whoever heard of a Christian 
of thirty feet in length ? ’ 

After Josyan’s baptism, Bevis achieved a wonderful adventure with a 
dragon which, like the fire-drake in Beowulf, was ravaging the country 
far and wide. ‘ Lancelot of the Lake fought with a fire-drake, as did 
Wade also and true knights were they both and I understand that Guy of 
Warwick slew a dragon in Northumberland, but such a dragon was never 
seen as Bevis slew, I ween 

The ears of this dragon were rough and long—his front was hard 
as Steel—eight tusks curved outwards from his mouth, the least being 
seventeen inches round; he was both lithe and grim and maned withal 
like to a Steed ; he bore his head ereft in pride, and there was a space of 
four and twenty feet betwixt his shoulder and his tail. Now his tail was 
sixteen feet in length, his wings glistened like glass in the sun ; the scales 
upon his sides and breaSt were Strong as adamant and well-wrought 
brass. Never was there a fouler or more fearsome beaSt. 

I muSt not Stop to describe the battle or to tell of the wonders of the 
well of healing which saved the life of our hero and enabled him to slay 
his terrible adversary. You will remember how well Spenser remembered 
Sir Bevis in his description in Bk. I, Canto XI of the Faerie Queene :— 

Behind his backe uuweeting as he Stood, 

Of auncient time there was a springing well 
From which fast trickled forth a silver flood. 

Full of great vertues, and for med’cine good 
Whylome, before that cursed Dragon got 
That happie land, and all with innocent blood 
Defyld those sacred waves, it rightly hot 
The well of life, ne yet his vertues had forgot. 

Having slain the dragon, Bevis journeys to England with a hundred 
knights provided by the grateful Bishop of Cologne. Saber, his foster 
father, was living in the Isle of Wight and the Emperor of Almaine held 
Southampton. 

Time fails me to tell of the battle in ‘ Sunny May, when leaf and grass 
bud begin to grow green and the birds learn their newest songs ’, in which 
Bevis wins back his inheritance with the help of Saber and casts the Em¬ 
peror into a cauldron of boiling pitch and brimstone, or of how the 
faithful Josyan is ensnared by the treachery of a false knight. Sir Miles, and 
forced to wed him, and how she hanged her new lord to the arras curtain 
on the bridal night, and was only rescued from a fiery death by the oppor- 


54 





SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 

tune arrival of Sir Bevis, who is now married to Josyan by the Bishop of 
Cologne. 

One would think that by this time Sir Bevis and Josyan had passed 
through sufficient adventures to deserve to rule their heritage in peace. 
But the romance goes on for another thousand lines which recount, among 
other things, how Arundel dashes out the brains of the son of Edgar, 
King of England ; how Ascopart proves a traitor and betrays Josyan to 
King Yvor ; how Saber kills Ascopart and rescues Josyan; how Bevis 
vanquishes King Yvor and becomes King of Ermyn and the realm of 
King Yvor; how Bevis wars against King Edgar and the citizens of 
London, where he is almost slain in Cheapside. Sir Bevis, however, is 
rescued by his son. Sir Guy, with a host of sixty thousand men from 
Hamtoun, who fought 4 until the Thames ran red in blood paSt West¬ 
minster, and until they slew two and thirty thousand, and so took the 
city \ 

Then we are told that Sir Bevis came to Leaden Hall in London, fetch¬ 
ing Josyan thither also. They hold a feaSt in that rich city fourteen nights, 
keeping open court for all folk that care to come. King Edgar wisely 
makes peace with the redoubtable champion. 4 Then Bevis took leave 
of King Edgar and Saber. He gave his Earldom of Southampton unto 
Saber and shipped from Hamtoun for his realm of Mombraunt with his 
son Sir Guy and all his knights ’. 

Bevis and Josyan dwell happily in love for three and thirty years. 
Then Josyan took a grievous evil, and knowing her end was near she sent 
for her son Guy to give him her blessing and to say farewell. 4 And when 
he was come, Sir Bevis went to the Stable to see how fared the good Steed 
Arundel. Now Arundel had dropped down dead. Then with a heavy 
heart came Bevis back into the chamber where Josyan lay dying and took 
her in his arms and held her to him till she died and ere her body had grown 
cold his soul went to her. So they passed from the noise of the world 
and were nevermore divided ’. 

Even this severely abridged account of the contents of Sir Bevis 
retains, I would hope, sufficient traces of the original to explain its wide¬ 
spread popularity in earlier days. But it would be a serious error to 
imagine that this somewhat bald and in part disjointed synopsis is at all 
equal in interest to the Middle-English text, which, in spite of many a 
fault, is full of the movement, pidturesqueness and colour of life in the 
Middle Ages, a veritable Store-house of information on old-world customs, 
dress, manners, folk-lore, and proverbs—not to mention Stereotyped 


55 



WESSEX 


phrases—and an epitome of many of the most popular fruits garnered by 
the medieval imagination in its uncritical rambles through the realms 
of romance. 

The popularity of Sir Bevis is vouched for by the fa£t that in addition 
to at lea§t eight Early English versions of the romance there are nine 
Old French manuscripts and early versions in Welsh, Old Norse, Russian 
and Italian. In Italy, indeed, there is a regular cycle of Bevis tales. 

In spite of his exploits, history has done but scant justice to Sir Bevis. 
Indeed the moSt circumstantial historical account of our hero is that given 
by Dr. Fuller in his Worthies of England, who tells us that Bevis was born 
in England and was Earl of Southampton at the time William the 
Conqueror won the battle of Hastings. Refusing to bow down be¬ 
neath the Conqueror’s yoke, Bevis (like Hereward the Wake) main¬ 
tained a desultory warfare against him for four years : finally gathering 
together an army of English and Welsh, with the assistance of 
Hastings the Dane, he gave William battle at Carcliffe in Wales. There 
Bevis was defeated in 1070 and fled to Carlisle—and oblivion, for this 
is all history as written by Fuller knows about Bevis, except that in Fuller’s 
day (and in our own for aught I know to the contrary) his famous sword 
Morgelay was preserved in Arundel caStle. It is unfortunate that Dr. 
Fuller does not quote his authorities, especially as serious discrepancies 
with the tale told in the early romances have inclined some sceptics to 
doubt his fafts ! 

Seriously, however, history knows nothing of Sir Bevis, and in spite 
of the researches of Rajna and Stimming—the two greatest authorities on 
the subject—the origin of the Bevis saga is Still shrouded in mystery. 

Pio Rajna (in his Le Origini dell’ Epopea Francese, 1884) set forth 
his view that the Bevis Story originally came from Germany; that 
HanStone was at first not an English town but a German town near 
the French border, and that confusion between HanStone and Hamtoun 
arose with the Anglo-Norman redactor of the saga, who voluntarily or 
involuntarily confused the two places. Rajna found corroboration for 
his view inter alia in the fact that the betrayer of Bevis lived in Mainz and 
his uncle in Cologne. Rajna’s view has received the powerful support of 
GaSton Paris, who, in his French Eiterature of the Middle Ages, says that 
Bevis of Flamtoun is of German origin. 

Rajna’s view has, however, been, in my opinion, completely refuted 
by A. Stimming in his Der Anglonormannisghe Boeve de Haumtone (Halle, 
1899), which is the moSt important work yet published on the Bevis Story. 

56 













SIR BEVIS OF HAMTOUN 


Stimming, after a most thorough comparison of all the existing 
versions of the legend, comes to the following conclusions : 

(1) All the extant versions of the legend are derived from an Anglo- 
Norman version written early in the thirteenth century (the earliest 
English version, that of the Auchinleck MS., is not earlier than 1327) 
and moSt of the discrepancies on which Rajna based his conclusions are 
of later date than the original version. 

(2) Internal evidence is almost wholly in favour of the view that 
Bevis of Hamtoun is an Anglo-Norman epic—that is, that it was first 
written in England. Bevis tells King Hermin that he was born in England 
(386). King Hermin tells Josyan that Bevis has gone to England to kill 
his Stepfather (978). When Josyan learns from the disguised palmer that 
he comes from England, she asks about Bevis (1402) ; the king of the 
land is called Edgar (2623) ; Bevis’s mother is the King of Scotland’s 
daughter (20-27) ; English nobles like Claris of Leicester are mentioned, 
etc., etc., and all through the epic shipping and the sea play an important 
part, which we should not expeft in a German poem. [The refs, are to 
the A. N. Version]. 

On the other hand, there is no ground for supposing that Bevis is a 
national English epic or for assuming that it is historical. We shall 
search the annals of England in vain for King Edgar whose son was slain 
by the kick of a horse, for an invasion of Hampshire by an Emperor of 
Germany, for records of the bloody battle in London when the Thames 
ran red with blood, or even for an Earl Bevis of the days of King Edgar. 

S. J. CRAWFORD. 



57 















WINCHESTER—AND THE READING OF BOOKS 


W HEN I was at Winchester, about fifty years ago, Moberly Library 
played a very important part in my life, and I retain a deep-rooted 
affection for it. It was not the old Library (known as the 
Fellows’ Library), which was totally unknown and inaccessible to the 
mere boy, and the contents of which hardly £ palpitated with actuality ’ for 
him, but the School Library, founded in memory of Dr. Moberly (head 
master, 1835-66) and housed on the first floor of the block of buildings, 
containing the class-rooms, ereCted in 1870. Prefefts could have access 
to it practically at all times before locking-up ; inferiors only on Sunday 
afternoons, by a cumbrous process of written orders from the second 
master or house masters. Commoners made little use of it—having house 
libraries of their own—but College men prized the privilege highly. 
Accordingly, after luncheon on Sunday, the second master’s narrow 
Staircase was besieged by a throng of thirty or forty boys demanding 
orders, which Mr. Richardson patiently wrote out for each of us, and for 
the reSt of the afternoon, till Evening Chapel, the Library was crowded 
with juvenile readers. 

What attracted us was certainly not frivolous fiCtion; possibly not 
because we should not have read it if we could, but because it was not there. 
FiCtion was represented by complete sets of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, 
George Eliot, Charles Kingsley, and—a Strange addition—Miss Thack¬ 
eray ; but little else, so far as I remember. Otherwise there was—in 
addition to editions of the Greek and Latin classics, which were more in 
demand by prefects on week-days—a good representative collection of 
English poetry and prose literature, history, travels, theology, and modern 
languages (not much used), and a little science. The main Staple was 
Standard English literature, whether in the form of poetry, fiCtion, history, 
or essays, and the point which appears to me of interest is that it was upon 
this provender that we browsed, eagerly and not of compulsion, Sunday 
after Sunday for several years, until we became prefects and were free of 
the Library at all times, and began to have collections of books of our own. 

There lay the secret of that immensely important part of education 
which takes place outside the class-room. English literature was not 
much taught as a school subjeCt, though it was encouraged by one valuable 
prize; but most boys, at any rate in College, imbibed considerable quan¬ 
tities of it, and acquired a love for it under the law of liberty. It was not 
considered the right thing to do school work—except preparation of a 

58 






WINCHESTER—AND THE READING OF BOOKS 

short Greek Testament lesson for Monday morning—on Sunday; hence 
Sunday was free for one’s own reading. Sometimes it was sermons ; a 
good many boys have, at one time or another, a taSte for this class of 
literature, and I remember reading much of Newman, Robertson, and 
Jeremy Taylor. At another time it might be history ; Macaulay, Prescott, 
and Carlyle come first to memory as belonging to this period; and, for 
one year (the year of the Russo-Turkish War), military history was the 
supreme interest, to the detriment of my progress in class, but with the 
acquisition of a permanent hobby : an analysis of Hamley’s Operations of 
War , made then, was turned to account for the training of officers in 
1914-18. But English literature was the main subject, and for this I 
have to thank Moberly Library. 

The objeft of these reminiscences is not anecdotage, but to point a 
moral, and to urge the value of miscellaneous reading. e More things 
are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of’, and more, much more, 
is wrought by the miscellaneous reading of good literature. It is a taSte 
that should be acquired young, and its price is above rubies. Literature 
which is not good—which is rubbish, but attractive rubbish—is now so 
plentiful and so easily obtainable that the path of the young is beset by 
more temptations. A well-seleCted school or college library will, however, 
supply only books which can be read with advantage, whether fidtion or 
otherwise, and the boy or young man who has acquired the habit of 
reading in such a library should have acquired with it a taSte which will 
last him through life. 

It is a very salutary rule to do no work on Sundays, and to reserve 
this time for miscellaneous reading. Even from the narrow point of view 
of success in one’s school or university work it is highly advantageous ; 
for a knowledge of good literature gives a background to one’s regular 
work, adds quality and substance to essays or answers to questions, trains 
one in literary Style and expression, and provides a fund of miscellaneous 
knowledge which is of service in any profession or walk of life. 

Another opportunity for miscellaneous reading which is often neg- 
leCted is during train journeys. In a suburban train, nine tenths of the 
passengers seem to read nothing but the morning paper in the morning 
and the evening paper in the evening. Such a devotion to the news of the 
day is excessive, and, if one of these journeys is given to a book instead of 
a paper, the gain is great. It is surprising how much ground one can cover 
by twenty or thirty minutes’ reading every day; and all the best literature 
is now obtainable in editions which can be carried in the pocket. 

59 






WESSEX 


It is the privilege of age to give advice, and of youth to negleft it, 
but—since the editor of Wessex has demanded an article—I trust it is not 
officious to offer a reminiscence of the experience of youth, and to express 
the hope that the University College—and future University—of Wessex 
will aim at giving its Students the same sort of opportunities that Win¬ 
chester gave ine. I have no doubt that many of them will profit by them 
if they are given the chance, 

F. G, KENYON. 


SILCHESTER 
by Mart Deane 

I KNOW a quiet country place 

Where the curious Still may trace 
Upon old England’s wrinkled face 
The city of a conquering race. 

But Nature has unbuilt its walls. 

And left her soil to pave those halls 
From whence the saving hand of man 
Has culled such relics as it can; 

And in the very precinfts now 
Of that Roman town men reap and plough. 

Sons of a later empire they. 

Of power as great, of wider sway; 

How long will that be suffered to Stay, 

E’er in its turn it pass away ? 


60 




WITH HUDSON IN HAMPSHIRE 

BY THE ITCHEN 

N OT everyone in Winchester knows that he can Start at the Nuns’ 
Walk and, except for a few yards at King’s Worthy and Abbot’s 
Worthy, may avoid the main road all the way to Itchen Abbas. 
And further that, using this delightful footpath, he will pass by the scene 
of a prose idyll as entrancing to a nature-lover as any to be found in litera¬ 
ture. I mean W. H. Hudson’s record of a ten weeks’ residence by the 
Itchen as related in the last three chapters of Hampshire Days. 

Let us get our bearings by a few extrafts from the book. 

‘ There are no more refreshing places in Hampshire, one might almost 
say in England, than the green level valleys of the TeSt and Itcnen that 
wind, alternately widening and narrowing, through the downland country 
to Southampton Water. . . . 

‘ I think I know quite a dozen|villages on the former Stream, and 
fifteen or sixteen on the latter, in any one of which I could spend long 
years in perfect contentment. . . . 

‘ One prefers the TeSt and another the Itchen, doubtless because in a 
matter of this kind the earth-lover will invariably prefer the spot he knows 
most intimately; for this reason, much as I love the TeSt, long as I would 
linger by it, I love the Itchen more, having had a closer intimacy with 
it. . . . 

4 It happened that in June 1900, cycling Londonwards from Beaulieu 
and the coaSt by Lymington, I came to the valley, and to a village about 
half-way between Winchester and Alresford, on a visit to friends in their 
summer fishing-retreat. They had told me about their cottage, which 
serves them all the best purposes of a lodge in the vast wilderness. 

‘ A long field’s length away from the cottage is the little, ancient, 
rustic, tree-hidden village. . . . There is also an ancient avenue of limes 
which leads nowhere and whose origin is forgotten. The ground under 
the trees is overgrown with long grass and nettles and burdock; 
nobody comes or goes by it . . . nor is there any way or path to the 
cottage; but one must go and come over the green fields, wet or dry. 

Further on, writing of the swifts, the author says : 4 On days when 
the sun shone they came in numbers to perch on the telegraph wires 
Stretched across a field between the cottage and village ’. 

61 










WESSEX 


if we note the above particulars there need be no difficulty in finding 
the site of the cottage, or fishing-lodge. I say ‘ site ’ because the habitation 
no longer exists. About ten years ago, Sir Edward and Lady Grey being 
about to return to their fishing-lodge for a time, the caretaker placed some 
bedding in front of the fire to air. This caught fire in her absence and the 
place was burnt to the ground. 

The site—or scene, as I prefer to call it—may be approached either 
by Itchen Abbas, the village mentioned above, or from Chilland, the laSt 
hamlet the walker from Winchester will Strike before reaching his destina¬ 
tion. To give the latter first. Immediately above Lower Chilland House 
there is a footpath. Taking this, he will cross four Stiles. On surmount¬ 
ing the third the path branches. Taking the right-hand one, and making 
across the wide field, he will come to the fourth Stile, which has a gateway 
at the side, and probably the gate will be open. Keeping close to the 
hedge on his left hand, he will presently find himself in the ancient avenue 
above mentioned. When he wishes to continue his walk to Itchen Abbas, 
which is the village also above mentioned, he will find the path immedi¬ 
ately opposite to the one he has juSt left. In the meantime he will turn to 
the right down the avenue, and, in a few paces, will find a fragile fence 
enclosing a wild garden, with what at first sight appears to be an ivy- 
covered tree-Stump in the middle. On close inspection he will see that 
this is the chimney-Stack of the vanished cottage, which, with the brick 
foundations, is all that remains of the lodge in the wilderness. He will see 
the sweetbriar and roses planted by Sir Edward Grey Still there, and that 
the laSt tree on the right-hand side is the one described as the favourite 
reSting-place of the birds. 

* For, not only was it the largest of the limes, but it was the laSt of the 
row, and overlooked the valley, so that when they flew across from the 
wood on the other side they mostly came to it. It was a very noble tree, 
eighteen feet in circumference near the ground . . . and threw out long, 
horizontal, drooping branches, the lowest of which feathered down to the 
grass \ 

It is pleasant to note that the then Sir Edward and Lady Grey received 
Mr. Hudson here as an honoured gueSt, juSt as Lord and Lady Ashburton 
received Carlyle at the Grange beyond ‘ ruined AbbotStone ’. Whilst 
occupying the cottage, Hudson visited AbbotStone and Swarraton, where 
Gilbert White was curate-in-charge for a time. 

Opposite to the cottage ruins, on the other side of the avenue, is 
the old chalk-pit. 


fa 





WITH HUDSON IN HAMPSHIRE 


‘ It was doubtless a very old pit, with sides which had the appearance 
of natural cliffs and were overhung and draped with thorn-trees, masses of 
old ivy, and traveller’s joy. Inside it was a pretty, tangled wilderness; 
on the floor many tall annuals flourished—knapweed and thistle, and dark 
mullein and teasel, six to eight feet high 

The prettiness, it may here be remarked, has been somewhat marred 
by the place having been used as a dumping-ground for pots and pans and 
corrugated iron. This neighbourhood, at any rate until recently, appears 
to have been unvisited by a dust-cart. When I was driving with an 
Alresford friend one day, he suddenly pulled the reins saying, ‘ Excuse me 
for a minute ’. Going to the back of the dog-cart, he took out a bulging 
sack, disappeared between some bushes, and presently returned with the 
sack empty. On my inquiring whether he had been disposing of the 
body, he said, ‘ That is the only way we have of getting rid of our empty 
tins, etc.’. There is a dump of this kind on the Tichborne branch from 
the upper road from Winchester to Alresford. 

The approach from Itchen Abbas is through a farm gate at the side 
of the church fence. After passing under the telephone wires to Avington 
House, the old avenue is reached on the side opposite the path from 
Chilland and Winchester. 

I have not mentioned the simplest way of all of reaching the now 
historical spot, for the sufficient reason that it is marked ‘ Private ’, at 
both ends. Now ‘ Private ’ is a notice which I always respeft, while that 
of ‘ Trespassers will be prosecuted ’ is one which I frequently ignore. It 
is therefore to be hoped that the reader, reaching the avenue by the path 
mentioned, will remember that he is on private ground by the courtesy 
of Sir John Shelley, and that, after visiting the pastoral shrine, he will 
pursue his way without encroaching farther. 

But, before doing so, he may surely rest under Hudson’s lime-tree for 
a while to recall the delightful descriptions of the three water birds—the 
coot, the moorhen, and dabchick, or little grebe; the three pigeons— 
ring-dove, Stock-dove, and turtle-dove ; the four buntings—the reed, the 
cirl, the yellow-hammer, and the corn-bunting; the four tits ; and the 
swallows and swifts as they congregate before flight or get themselves 
caught on the angler’s line. Viscount Grey, when he was Sir Edward, 
unavoidably thus hooked three swifts in one day, and, when one of these 
was watched after release, it flew backwards and forwards oyer its defined 
beat as if nothing had happened. 

It would take too long to recall the Story of the orphaned blackbird, 
which, even after dark, would chuckle a sleepy ‘ good night ’ in response 

63 




Wessex 


to Hudson’s call of c Blackie Doubly long would it take to recall the 
references to the skulking water-rail, the resplendent kingfisher, and the 
open-air talks about yellow smells* purple taStes, and reedy sounds ; or 
to conjure up the old cottager and her elderberries, her dratting of the 
Starlings and love of the blackbirds, her regret of the old times of home¬ 
made wines and bread, home-cured bacon and home-brewed ale, and her 
scorn of windy victuals all fetched from the shop or the public house. I 
think that as many delightful pastoral scenes may be revived while resting 
beside this little plot of ground as on any other spot in the kingdom. 

e There are places, as there are faces, which draw the soul, and with 
which, in a little while, one becomes Strangely intimate ’. 

The lines of Wessex people have fallen in pleasant places, seeing that 
they may lead to such hallowed corners as this. I like to think of Hudson’s 
tenderness as shown in the instance of the dead sand-martin. 

‘ Ei this same field, one day when the pleasant company were leaving 
us after a week’s reSt, I picked up one that had killed himself by Striking 
againSt the wire. A most delicate litde dead swallow, looking in his pale 
colouring and softness as moth-like in death as he had seemed when alive 
and flying. I took him home—the little moth-bird pilgrim to Africa, 
who had got no farther than the Itchen on his journey—and buried him at 
the roots of a honeysuckle growing by the cottage door ’. 

Hudson’s poetic sense is juSt as much in evidence : 

‘ The sun rises, and is not seen for half an hour, then appears pale and 
dim, but grows brighter and warmer by degrees, and, in a litde while, 
lo I the mist has vanished except for a white rag, clinging like torn lace 
here and there to the valley reeds and rushes. . . . The sun sets crimson, 
and the robins sing-in the night and silence. But it is not silent long; 
before dark the brown owls begin hooting first in the woods, then fly 
across to the trees that grow beside the cottage, so that we may better 
enjoy their music. At intervals, too, we hear the windy, sibilant screech 
of the white-owl across the valley. Then the wild cry of the Stone-curlew 
is heard as the lonely bird wings his way paSt, and after that late voice there 
is perfect silence, with Starlight or moonlight ’. 

J. W. LINDLEY. 


A STRANGE VISIT 
by A. Romney Green 

O NCE in the year—I wonder why 

But once ?—with his sweet-bitter cry. 
This runner upon earth mounts high 
In zigzags black against the sky 

Round seaward-looking chimney tops 
Whence, even as we gaze, he drops 
Unseen to neighbouring field or copse, 

This runner through the Standing crops. 

And one year—why but one alone ?— 

One early morning—why but one ?— 

A scuffling in the hollow Stone, 

The wonder-waking of a drone, 

As down our bedroom chimney thus 
The feathery scuffle and the fuss. 

Birth from the Stone so beauteous 
Of this Strange visit—why to us ? 

Neither a wounded thing to shame 
The soul, and neither sick nor tame. 

But freely, this untutor’d flame 
Of wild life—whence or how it came 

Into my hand, I know not, I, 

My only care to let it fly 
Ere in my hand it bruise or die. 

This live thing with the lustrous eye 

As of a frighten’d deer-—our gueSt, 

God knows on what fantastic quest. 

In silks and satins of the best. 

Brown mantle, buff and tawny vest. 




WESSEX 


His wings so delicately sown 
With black upon their velvet brown, 
And, blindly quivering to be flown, 
His pulses beating to my own, 

As, dainty feet and silver thighs 
All gather’d with smooth wings, he lies 
BreaSt upwards and bewilder’d eyes 
A moment in my hand—and flies. 

So seldom seen, so often heard. 

Your name a long familiar word— 
This meeting, why so long deferr’d. 
Or why at all, mysterious bird ? 

Ah, how I long’d, but did not dare. 
Gaze till I laid the secret bare— 

What secret of the earth and air 
With their liege delegate to share ? 



66 






WILLIAM BARNES 

AN APPRECIATION 


T HERE are two great currents in European poetry. One is the 
exalted and courtly and learned Strain, the tradition of the Grand 
Style, which has produced the heroic and philosophic poetry of 
the ancients, the chanson courtois of the troubadours and the trouveres of 
mediaeval France, the poetry of the dolce HU nuovo of Dante and Guido 
Cavalcanti and their contemporaries and successors in Italy, the brief glory 
of the French Pleiade, and the main Stream of English poetry which de¬ 
scends from Chaucer through Spenser to Milton, to Wordsworth and to 
Shelley. This is the poetry of lofty idealism easily passing into the rarefied 
air of mystical philosophy and religion ; it is the poetry of the vates, the 
divine seer, the poet-prophet as described in the old treatise On the Sublime 
ascribed to Longinus, and in our tongue by Shelley (who was himself such 
a poet-prophet) in his Defence of Poetry. It is poetry for the initiated, for 
poets and poetry lovers, and over the door of its temple is written ‘ Procul 
O procul eSte, profani ’. 

The other current may be described as the current of popular poetry. 
It does not philosophize or idealize, but expresses in the most clirefl way 
the ordinary man’s or woman’s instinctive appreciation of the spiritual 
elements in everyday life, or in the popular religion or the folk-lore of his 
or her race. It is the poetry of common humanity, and*it furnishes a 
salutary reminder that there is genuine poetry in common humanity, 
although it is not poetry of the same ethereal quality as the poetry of the 
tradition of the Grand Style. There muSt have been a deal of poetry of 
this kind in the ancient world, which we have lost It is seen, worked up 
into a form which apes the Grand Style, in Hesiod. It is found in the 
fragments of Greek folk-songs preserved by Athenaeus. A rich mass of it 
muSt lie behind the idylls of Theocritus, and something of the sweetness of 
Latin popular poetry is probably preserved in the Pervigilium Veneris. 
But it is from the Middle Ages that our great heritage of popular poetry 
comes ; from the riming Latin songs of the Wandering Scholars of the 
mediaeval cloister and university, so admirably described in a recent 
monograph ; from the popular lyrics in the vernacular tongues of France, 
Italy, Germany, England, and Spain, written down between the twelfth 
and the fifteenth centuries; and from the ballads or popular lyrical 

67 


WESSEX 


narrative poems which appear so Strangely all over Europe, in si mil ar 
forms, at about the same time, from the frontiers of Moorish and Christian 
Spain to the marches of England and Scotland. It is true, as Matthew 
Arnold insisted in his Lectures on Translating Homer , that Homer is noble 
and that the ballads are not; but there is a beauty in the ballad and the 
popular lyric which is a great contribution to the life of our race, and one 
which we could ill afford to lose. It is possible to love and to worship the 
Iliad and the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lofl, and yet to feel 
that there is something which is not to be found in those great works in 
the German Volkslieder. 

Lass tanzen uns den Reihen 
Liebe, schone Frau, 

Und freuen uns des Maien 
, Heberglanzt die Au. 

Ach Lieb, lass'dich’s erbarmen. 

Das ich so elend bin, 

Und schliess mich in dein’ Arme ! 

So fahrt der Winter bin. 

Or in the French chansons populaires. 

Gentilz gallans de France 
Qui en guerre allez, 

Je vous prie qu’il vous plaise 
Mon amy saluer. 

* . 

Dans le jardin de mon pere 
Les bias sont fleuris; 

Tous les oiseaux du monde 
Viennent y faire leur nid. 

English songs that have come down to us from the fourteenth 

Bytuene Mersh ant Averil, 

Wben spray biginnith to springe. 

The lutel foul hath hire wyl 
On hyre lud to sing. 

• »•••• 

Maiden in the mor lay. 

In the mor lay, 

SevenySt fulle, sevenifit fulle. 

Maiden in the mor lay 
SeveniStes fube ant a day. 

68 


Or those 
century. 



WILLIAM BARNES 


It should be noticed that poetry in the popular tradition is not necessarily 
‘folk-poetry’. It may be the work of a very fine and careful artist. 
Every now and then in the history of European literature such an artist 
has appeared. Villon is perhaps the^moSt notable in the vernacular 
languages of Europe, and he, like other great artists in thepopular tradition, 
actually used courtly forms as vehicles for genuinely popular poetry. 

In England since the sixteenth century our poetry has generally been 
out of touch with the popular tradition. Wiat and Surrey took up the 
thread of the courtly poetry that had been lost in mazes of pedantry after 
Chaucer’s death, and from the time of Spenser the tradition of English 
poets has been the tradition of the Grand Style. We have paid the penalty 
of greatness. We have had every variety of great poem from Spenser’s 
marriage hymns to Hamlet and Othello, from Paradise Lofi and Samson 
Agonisies to The Prelude and Adonais, but we have too seldom heard that 
note of homely sweetness that is hardly ever absent from the German lyric 
from the Middle Ages down to the songs of Heine. There is little in 
English poetry corresponding to the Lieder . It is true that there is some¬ 
thing of the popular tradition in Shakespeare ; not, indeed, in his great 
works, in the tragedies or the sonnets, but in those snatches of song in the 
comedies and romances of which Milton may have been thinking when he 
desired to hear 

Sweetest Sbakespear fancies childe. 

Warble his native Wood-notes wilde. . . . 

Such is the ‘ Cuckoo Song ’ in Love’s Labour’s Loft: B 

When Dasies pied and Violets blew. 

And Ladie-smockes all silver white, 

And Cuckow-buds of yellow hew 

Do paint the Medowes with delight. 

Such is FeSte’s song in Twelfth Night which ‘ dallies with the innocence of 
love ’: 

Comejaway, come|away|death. 

And in sad cypresse let me be laide. 

Flye away, flye away breath, 

I am slain by a faire cruell maide. 

Such, too, is that wonderful ballad of Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, 
which is full of the poetry of the life of the Elizabethan vagrant: 




WESSEX 


When Daffadils begin to peeie. 

With heigh the Doxy over the dale. 

Why then comes in the sweet o’ the yeere. 

For the red blood raigns in the winters pale. 

The white sheete bleaching an the hedge 

With hey the sweet birds, O how they sing : 

Doth set my pugging tooth an edge 
For a quart of Ale is a dish for a King. 

But, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English popular poetry 
degenerated into the Street ballad, and lost all its sweetness. Only for an 
all too brief moment Bishop Corbet, an artist of genius, took up the 
tradition in that Proper New Ballad of his that begins : 

Farewell rewards and fairies. 

Good housewives now may say. 

For now foul sluts in dairies 
Do fare as well as they; 

And, though they sweep their hearths no less 
Than maids are wont to do, 

Yet who of late for cleanliness 
Finds sixpence in her shoe ? 

and which ends : 

To William Churne of Staffordshire 
Give laud and praises due ; 

Who every meal can mend your cheer 
With tales both old and true. 

To William all give audience 
And pay you for his noddle : 

For all the fairies evidence • 

Were lost if it were addle. 

Here and there in the seventeenth-century miscellanies there are gleams 
of real popular poetry like the great Tom of Bedlam song in the second part 
of Westminster Drollery , but the last traces of the true popular tradition die 
out in England in the eighteenth century, in spite of the half successful 
attempts to revive it in the lyrics and ballads of Prior and Gay and the 
single triumph of Cowper in his John Gilpin. 

But in Scotland the position was very different. There the tradition 
of popular song had not been vulgarized as in England, and there was no 
great classical tradition to eclipse it. There we find writers, like Allan 

7 ° 





WILLIAM BARNES 


Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Lady Nairne, and others, producing poetry in 
the genuine popular tradition with all the old lyrical sweetness ; and there 
'finally we find Robert Burns, who, like Villon in the fifteenth century, 
was a great artist following, in his best work, the popular instead of the 
courtly and learned tradition. 

When the great revival of poetry came in England at the end of the 
eighteenth century, it did not on the whole take the form of a return to the 
spirit of popular poetry, in spite of the influence of Percy’s famous collec¬ 
tion. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare (the Shakespeare of the tragedies 
and the courtly comedies and the sonnets), the Elizabethan and Jacobean 
dramatists, and, above all, Milton, had oversung the 4 Wood-notes wilde ’, 
and it was in their works on the whole, rather than in the popular ballads 
and songs of the Middle Ages, that Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, 
Shelley, and Keats found their main source of inspiration. Coleridge, 
whose mind was the great formative influence on the new poetry, was a 
scholar and a philosopher, who cared far more for ideas than for the flesh 
and blood of popular poetry, and that is why The Ancient Mariner is so very 
different from the old English ballads. 

It is true that Wordsworth, who came from yeoman stock, felt that 
English poetry needed Strengthening by means of a renewed contaft with 
common life, and his famous theory of poetic diftion was certainly due to 
this feeling. But, in spite of all his efforts, Wordsworth’s attempts to 
write popular poetry are hardly successful. He is too often like a bird of 
paradise trying to imitate the habits of a barn-door fowl. His true 
subj efts are the subjefts of The Prelude. The Tines composed above Tintern 
Abbey, the great Ode, and the sonnets. They are his own inner life and 
the spiritual element in nature, and the relations between the two. It is 
curious to notice that, even among his poems of peasant life, the most 
successful, like Resolution and Independence, deal with ideas rather than 
persons or things. 

Byron, Shelley, and Keats lifted poetry back again into the English 
tradition of grand and ornate art, and that tradition was maintained by the 
best work of their successors, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and the Pre- 
Raphaelites. These poets at their best are all essentially poets for the 
Student and the lover of poetry, and not for the ordinary man or woman. 
At the end of the nineteenth century, however, some impatience was being 
felt at the essential other-worldliness of the poetry of the preceding age, 
and there was a widespread desire to bring English poetry again into touch 
with common life. J. M. Synge, in the preface to his own Poems, expresses 
this feeling very well. 

7 1 




WESSEX 


e Even if we grant that exalted poetry can be kept successful by itself, 
the Strong things of life are needed in poetry also to show that what is 
exalted or tender is not made by feeble blood. It may almost be said that 
before verse can be human again it muSt learn to be brutal 

These words describe exactly the task which has been partly performed 
by the poetry of Thomas Hardy in our own time. He brought poetry 
back from its splendid voyages among the Stars to e the Strong things of 
life ’, and taught it to be brutal for a while that it might again be human. 

But, of the thousands of modern readers of Thomas Hardy’s novels 
and poems, not one in a hundred has probably even heard the name of his 
great predecessor, William Barnes, the Dorset poet and philologist, to 
whose example Hardy owed so much and whose greatness he so generously 
acknowledged. 

Barnes is perhaps the greatest poet in the popular, as opposed to the 
courtly and exalted, tradition which England has produced. Like Burns, 
he was a great artist who deliberately chose to write in the popular rather 
than in the classical manner. If the southern English had the genius for 
self-advertisement which characterizes the Scotch and the Germans, the 
poems of William Barnes would be known like those of Burns and Heine 
from China to Peru. As it is, no complete edition of them is at present 
available, and Barnes is scarcely noticed by the critics and literary historians. 
The Cambridge Hiflorj of 'English Eiterature dismisses him in a single para¬ 
graph in a chapter on ‘ Lesser Poets of the Nineteenth Century ’, while the 
shorter histories and text-books usually ignore him entirely. The negled 
of the work of William Barnes will be attributed by many to the fad that 
he wrote in dialed. Yet the dialed of Barnes is, as he himself says, ‘ a 
broad and bold shape of the English language, as the Doric was of Greek ’, 
and it is not only far more beautiful in itself, but also more easily under¬ 
stood by the ordinary English reader than the dialed of Burns. Nation¬ 
alism and politics have cast a glamour round the Scottish and Irish dialeds, 
while English dialeds are Still mainly thought of as the language of poor 
countryfolk, and persons who, if they were Sicilians or Bretons or even 
Irish or Scotch, would be called ‘ peasants ’. As the work of Barnes 
is so little known outside Dorset to-day, it may not be out of place to give 
a brief sketch of his life. 

William Barnes 1 was born in 1801, and was the son of a tenant farmer 
in the Vale of Blackmore. He was educated firstly at a village dame’s 
school, and later at a larger school at SturminSter. He became clerk to a 

1 The writer of this article is chiefly indebted to the Life of William Barnes by his daughter, ‘ Leader 
Scott for the biographical details which follow. 


7 * 




WILLIAM BARNES 


solicitor in that town, and at the age of seventeen obtained employment 
in another lawyer’s office in Dorchester. It was at Dorchester that he 
seems to have written his earliest verses, and it was there that he published 
his earliest work, Orra, a Lapland Tale , in 1822. He married in 1822, and 
became master of a school at Mere in Wiltshire in 1823. At Mere he 
appears to have begun his philological Studies, and there he taught himself 
many languages, including French, German, Italian, Greek, Latin, and 
Persian. In 1835 he opened a boarding-school in South Street, Dor¬ 
chester, where his novel and highly successful methods of teaching at¬ 
tracted some attention. It was at this time that he began to Study 
Anglo-Saxon and to be Struck by its resemblance to the Dorset dialed 
which he had been hearing spoken around him since childhood. From 
these Studies he was led to the composition of poems in the Dorset dialed, 
the first collection of which he published at Dorchester in 1844, with an 
interesting dissertation (which unfortunately has never been reprinted) 
and a glossary. He took a leading part in the life of the town and was one 
of the first secretaries of the Dorchester County Museum. In 1847 he 
graduated as a ‘ ten years’ man ’ at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and 
was ordained a priest of the Church of England. It is to be hoped that 
the Statutes of the future University of Wessex will embody some arrange¬ 
ment similar to this old Cambridge custom which placed graduation within 
reach of those who cannot afford to spend three or four years at a university 
institution. Barnes’s first colledion of poems in the Dorset dialed was 
followed by another in 1850, and a third in 1863 1 ; he also published 
Poems Partly of Plural Life in National English in 1846, and Poems of Plural 
Life in Common English in 1879. His other works are voluminous and 
mainly philological. He became known as the champion of the ‘ purity ’ 
of En glish, and he fought consistently for the use of words of Anglo- 
Saxon origin. Some of his coinages, such as ‘ folkwain ’ for omnibus, 
‘wheel-saddle’ for bicycle, and ‘ pushwainling ’ for perambulator, are 
perhaps quaint rather than happy. On the other hand, he probably 
helped considerably in the revulsion of feeling against the old notion that 
‘ elegance ’ was to be gained by the use of words of Latin origin, and he 
may have helped to reinstate some of the old words which had been 
despised for a couple of centuries by ‘ polite authors ’. 

In 1862 he became redor of Came in Dorset, where he died in 1886. 
His poetry was especially admired by Coventry Patmore and by Francis 
Palgrave among his contemporaries. Tennyson also thought highly of 

1 The three collections were reprinted together in a single volume, which is now Out of print, called 
Potms of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect (Kegan Paul, London), in 1878, 

75 











WESSEX 


Barnes’s poems, and his own dialed: poems were possibly inspired by the 
example of the Dorset poet. When Thomas Hardy was working in an 
architect’s office at Dorchester, he knew Barnes, and used to consult him 
on grammatical points. He frequently visited him at Came Redory, and 
delighted in listening to his anecdotes of Dorset life. 1 He published a 
short article on Barnes in the Athenaeum of Odober 16, 1886, and he also 
made a seledion of Barnes’s poems which was published by the Oxford 
University Press in 1908. This little book is the bed possible introdudion 
to Barnes’s work. It has the double interest of providing an excellent 
seledion of Barnes’s poems, and of showing the poems which Hardy 
chiefly admired. There is also a smaller seledion made by the poet’s son, 
the Rev. Miles Barnes, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul. These two 
little books contain the only verses by Barnes which are now in print. 

Barnes’s appearance was piduresque. It is said, by Capt. Berkeley 
Williams of Herringdon, who remembers him didindly, to be exactly 
represented by the Statue by Roscoe Mullins at Dorchester. He wore a 
slouch hat, a cape, knee-breeches, and shoes with buckles, and generally 
carried slung over his shoulders a leather bag full of ‘ books and things to 
give to cottagers ’. Hardy, in his article on Barnes in the Athenaeum , 
speaks of him as usually preferring ‘ the middle of the road to the pave¬ 
ment ’, and to be constantly ‘ thinking of matters which had nothing to do 
with the scene before him ’. He describes him as plodding ‘ along with a 
broad, firm tread, notwithstanding the slight Stoop caused by his years. 
Every Saturday morning he might have been thus seen trudging up the 
narrow South Street, his shoes coated with mud and duSt according to the 
State of the roads between his rural home and DorcheSter, and a little grey 
dog at his heels, till he reached the four cross-ways in the centre of the 
town. Halting here, opposite the public clock, he would pull his old- 
fashioned watch from its deep fob, and set it with great precision to 
London time ’. 

In his introdudion to his seledion from Barnes’s poems, Hardy writes 
that, in his opinion, Barnes ‘ really belonged to the literary school of such 
poets as Tennyson, Gray, and Collins, rather than to that of the old un¬ 
premeditating singers in dialed. Primarily spontaneous, he was academic 
closely after; and we find him warbling his native woodnotes with a 
watchful eye on the predetermined score, a far remove from the popular 
impression of him as the naif and rude bard who sings only because he 
mud ’. This criticism is exceedingly interesting. Hardy has summed up 
Barnes’s work as a poet admirably when he writes e Primarily spontaneous, 

1 See The Early Life of Thomas Hardy by Florence Hardy, pp. 37, 200, et passim, . 

74 






WILLIAM BARNES 


he was academic closely after Barnes was certainly a great artist in 
metrical form, and no ‘ naif and rude bard but, in the opinion of the 
present writer, it is slightly misleading to speak of Barnes as belonging to 
‘ the literary school of Tennyson, Gray, and Collins It is true that, like 
those poets, he is a careful artist and a master of word music, but in his 
work there is a spontaneity and abandonment, as well as a quality of calling 
up concrete images, which are rarely found in the poets of what Hardy 
called the literary school. Barnes’s finest lyric, The Woodlands , may be 
cited in support of this Statement: 

O spread agean your leaves an’ flow’rs, 

Lwonesome woodlands ! zunny woodlands 1 
Here underneath the dewy show’rs 

O’ warm air’d spring-time, zunny woodlands 1 
As when, in drong or open ground, 

Wi’ happy bwoyish heart I vound 
The twitt’ren birds a-builden round 

Your high-bough’d hedges, zunny woodlands ! 

You gie’d me life, you gie’d me jay, 

Lwonesome woodlands ! zunny woodlands ! 

You gie’d me health as in my play 

I rambled through ye, zunny woodlands I 
You gie’d me freedom, vor to rove 
In airy mead or sheady grove; 

You gie’d me smilen Fanney’s love. 

The best ov all o’t, zunny woodlands ! 

My vu’St shrill skylark whiver’d high, 

Lwonesome woodlands ! zunny woodlands I 
To zing below your deep-blue sky 

An’ white spring-clouds, O zunny woodlands ! 

An’ boughs o’ trees that woonce Stood here, 

Wer glossy green the happy year 
That gie’d me woone I lov’d so dear. 

An’ now ha’ lost, O zunny woodlands ! 

O let me rove agean unspied, 

Lwonesome woodlands ! zunny woodlands ! 

Along your green-bough’d hedges’ zide. 

As then I rambled, zunny woodlands I 
An’ where the missen trees woonce Stood, 

Or tongues woonce rung among the wood. 

My memory shall meake em good. 

Though you’ve a-loSt em, zunny woodlands 1 


75 





WESSEX 


Compare this lyric with the beSt nature poems of the ‘ literary school 
with Collins’s Ode to Evening, with Gray’s Elegy, with Keats’s Ode to 
Autumn. The difference is surely apparent at once. The ‘ literary ’ poets 
are far more self-conscious. They do not abandon themselves to their 
mood, as Barnes abandons himself. They paint a beautiful scene and 
are concerned with the relationship between that scene and their own inner 
lives. The excellence of Barnes’s poem is of a different order. It is akin 
to that of the middle English lyric which begins ‘ Bytuene Mersh ant 
Averil ’, and to * Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon ’. Barnes is a 
careful and deliberate artist, but this does not make him self-conscious 
and detached in the manner of the ‘ literary ’ poet. For him at the time 
of inspiration, as for all poets of the popular tradition, his inner life is 
merged into the spiritual quality of his subj eft. 

It is interesting in this conneftion to compare Barnes with Words¬ 
worth when they are treating the same subjeft. Wordsworth’s fine lines 
on Nutting are well known. He is concerned with the splendour of the 
woodland scene, with the delight of the boyish exploit, and with the 
effeft of both of these things on his own inner life. 

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 

The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky. 

This is the method of the poet of the literary tradition, the tradition of the 
Grand Style. Let us compare it with the method of Barnes the poet of 
the popular tradition as seen in his lines Out a-nutt'en : 

LaSt week, when we’d a haul’d the crops. 

We went a-nutten out in copse, 

Wi’ nutten-bags to bring hwome vull, 

An’ beaky nutten-crooks to pull 
The bushes down; an’ all o’s wore 
Wold clothes that wer in rags avore. 

An’ look’d, as we did skip an’ zing, 

Lik’ merry gipsies in a String, 

A-gwain a-nutten. 

Zoo drough the Stubble, over rudge 
An’ vurrow, we begun to trudge; 

An’ Sal an’ Nan agreed to pick 
Along wi’ me, an’ Poll wi’ Dick ; 

An’ they went where the wold wood, high 
An’ thick, did meet an’ hide the sky; 

But we thought we mid vind zome good 
Ripe nuts among the shorter wood, 

The best vor nutten. 

7 6 


WILLIAM BARNES 


We voun’ zome bushes that did feace 
The downcast zunlight’s highest pleace. 

Where clusters hung so ripe an’ brown. 

That some slipp’d shell an’ veil to groun’. 

But Sal wi’ me zoo hitch’d her lag 
In brembles, that she coulden wag; 

While Poll kept clwose to Dick, an’ Stole 
The nuts vrom’s hinder pocket-hole. 

While he did nutty. 

Here the poet never thinks of himself as something separate from the 
scene that he is bringing before the reader’s eyes. At the moment of 
inspiration his whole being is, as it were, fused with its vitality and beauty. 
Barnes, in refusing to write a poem to encourage Dorset men to enlist, 
once said, * That is a subject conne&ed with politics, not with poetry. I 
have never written any of my poems, but one, with a drift. I write 
piftures which I see in my mind ’. This is what any true poet might 
have answered, but a poet in the literary tradition would think of the 
pictures and himself as two separate entities. Barnes has the popular 
poet’s power of surrendering his whole being to the mind pictures. 

Barnes’s subjefts are the landscapes of his native Dorset, with all 
their riches of trees, flowers, Streams, birds, and butterflies, and the life of 
the countryfolk, their work, and their loves, their sorrows and pleasures, 
their humour and their superstitions. As a poet of nature he is unsur¬ 
passed in his own peculiar way, and his rich dialed! seems to be made to 
express the rich quality of the pastoral Dorset scenery. His lyrics glitter 
with the light of wet, shining leaves, and grass and flowers and sunlit 
water and summer skies. 

When vu’St the breaken day is red. 

An’ grass is dewy wet. 

An’ roun’ the blackberry’s a-spread 
The spider’s gliss’nen net. 

On darksome pools o’ Stwoneless Stour, 

When sof’ly-rizen airs do cool 
The water in the skeenen pool. 

Thy beds o’ snow-white buds do gleam 
So fair upon the sky-blue Stream 
As whitest clouds a hangen high 
Avore the blueness o’ the sky. 


77 



WESSEX 


An’ there, in May, ’ithin the lewth 

O’ boughs in blooth, be sheady walks. 

An cowslips up in yollow beds 

Do hang their heads on downy Stalks. 

Dear lilac-tree, a-spreaden wide 
Thy purple blooth on ev’ry zide. 

As if the hollow sky did shed 
Its blue upon thy flow’ry head. 

Barnes’s landscapes are never excuses for moralizing or philosophiz¬ 
ing. He abandons himself wholly to their beauty. It has been said that 
he speaks of nature as no peasant could speak of it. Such a criticism is 
wholly beside the point. The popular poet’s business is not to speak like 
an ordinary man, but to express the things which the ordinary man feels 
but for which he cannot find words. 

In Barnes’s landscapes, humanity is never far distant. His pictures 
of the life of the Dorset villages can only be compared in their richness 
and raciness to the scenes of village life in the ‘ Wessex Novels ’. More 
than any English poet he has succeeded in expressing in verse the poetry 
of the work of the farm. For him, as for Burns and for Theocritus, there 
is a quality almost of ritual in the humblest details of rustic toil. His work¬ 
people are no townsman’s dreams of Corydon and Phillis, but genuine 
English flesh and blood, hard workers, great drinkers of ale and cyder, 
and by no means mealy-mouthed in their speech. What a guSto there 
is in the pifture of Hay-carren ! It is a scene which only J. F. Millet or 
the Thomas Hardy of Far from the Madding Crowd could have rivalled in 
paint or prose. 

It is impossible not to be reminded of the ‘ Wessex Novels ’ on almost 
every page of Barnes’s poems. His dairymaids recall Tess’s companions 
at Tallbothays. His shepherds are first cousins to Gabriel Oak. His 
parties have the rich quality of Tranter Dewy’s party in (Under the Green¬ 
wood Free. Finally, no one can read of Barnes’s Master Gwillet without 
recalling his first cousin Joseph Poorgrass in Farfrom the Madding Crowd. 

It is true that there is little hint in Barnes’s poems of that tragic side 
of Wessex life which is so prominent in the works of Hardy. His outlook 
is far more cheerful than Hardy’s, though his cheerfulness has little in 
common with the forced optimism of a Browning or a Stevenson. When 
criticized adversely for having painted only the brighter side of Dorset 
life he answered ‘ that many persons thought he had painted our folk in 
too bright colours, but that everything he had written was true of someone 

78 





WILLIAM BARNES 


in the classes described in the poems ; that he was in faft painting from life, 
though the level might be somewhat above the average \ This is an 
admirable answer to ‘ realists ’ of the kind that considers that ‘ reahsm ’ 
necessarily means the portrayal of the ugly or sordid parts of human life. 
Barnes’s natural outlook was cheerful, as Hardy’s was tragic or ironic, and 
each chose the elements in Wessex life that suited the quality of his art. 
But, if there is little tragedy in Barnes’s work, there is plenty of pathos ; 
and no poet, not Barnes or Heine himself, has expressed the pathos of 
simple human relationships with more poignancy and delicacy. The 
poem called Woak Hill is a masterpiece in this way, and furnishes an 
admirable illustration of what has been said concerning the ‘ popular ’ 
quality of Barnes’s poetry. The form is highly wrought and exotic, the 
‘ pearl ’ measure of Persian poetry introduced, I believe, by Barnes into 
English and imitated by Hardy in The Mother Mourns and elsewhere, but 
the matter is essentially in the popular tradition. The poet does not 
moralize or rationalize, but expresses in the moSt direct manner all that is 
spiritual in the ordinary man’s sense of bereavement. 

When sycamore leaves wer a-spreaden. 

Green-ruddy, in hedges, 

Bezide the red douft o’ the ridges, 

A-dried at Woak Hill; 

I packed up my goods all a-sheenen 
Wi’ long years o’ handlen, 

On douSty red wheels ov a waggon. 

To ride at Woak Hill. 

The brown thatchen ruf o’ the dwellen, 

I then wer a-leaven. 

Had shelter’d the sleek head o’ Meary, 

My bride at Woak Hill. 

But now vor zome years, her light voot-vall 
’S a-lost vrom the vlooren. 

Too soon vor my jay an’ my childern. 

She died at Woak Hill. 

But Still I do think that, in soul, 

She do hover about us ; 

To ho vor her motherless childern. 

Her pride at Woak Hill. 

Zoo—left she should tell me hereafter 
I Stole off ’ithout her. 

An’ left her, uncall’d at house-ridden. 

To bide at Woak Hill— 


79 


WESSEX 


I call’d her so fondly, wi’ lippens 
All soundless to others. 

An’ took her wi’ air-reachen hand. 

To my zide at Woak Hill. 

On the road I did look round, a-talken 
To light at my shoulder. 

An’ then led her in at the door-way. 

Miles wide vrom Woak Hill. 

An’ that’s why vo’k thought, vor a season. 

My mind wer a-wandren 
Wi’ sorrow, when I wer so sorely 
A-tried at Woak Hill. 

But no ; that my Meary mid never 
Behold herzelf slighted, 

I wanted to think that I guided 
My guide vrom Woak Hill. 

As a love lyrist, Barnes is more closely akin to such a poet as his 
friend Coventry Patmore than to the poets of unrestrained passion like 
Catullus, Heine, or Burns. Pie is the singer of faithful loves, of marriage, 
and of the family. But he could write love songs of a radiance and a 
melody which challenge comparison with the best of Burns even with 
0 my luve’s like a red, red rose or Ae fond kiss, and then we sever. Such is 
the exquisite song In the Spring, written in the same * pearl ’ measure as 
that used in Woak Hill. 

My love is the maid ov all maidens. 

Though all mid be comely. 

Her skin’s lik’ the jessamy blossom 
A-spread in the Spring. 

Her smile is so sweet as a beaby’s 
Young smile on his mother. 

Her eyes be as bright as the dew drop 
A-shed in the Spring. 

O grey-leafy pinks o’ the gearden. 

Now bear her sweet blossoms ; 

Now deck wi’ a rwose-bud, O briar, 

Her head in the Spring. 

O light-rollen wind blow me hither, 

The vaice ov her talken. 

Or bring vrom her veet the light douft. 

She do tread in the Spring. 

80 


WILLIAM BARNES 


O zun meake the gil’cups all glitter. 

In goold all around her ; 

An’ meake o’ the deaisys’ white flowers 
A bed in the Spring. 

O whissle gay birds, up bezide her. 

In drong-way, an’ woodlands, 

O zing, swingen lark, now the clouds, 

Be a-vled in the Spring. 

An’ who, you mid ax, be my praises 
A-meaken so much o’. 

An’ oh ! ’tis the maid I’m a-hopen 
To wed in the Spring. 

Barnes has been compared several times to Burns in the course of 
this article, and I believe that, to an unbiassed judgment, the Dorset poet 
would not suffer by such a comparison. His range is perhaps narrower 
than that of Burns ; and the Rabelaisian humour, the grotesque satire, 
and irony of the Scotsman belong to regions of the spirit into which he 
never enters. But, on the other hand, in Barnes’s poetry there are none of 
the lapses into flat and would-be elegant ‘ poetic didion ’ which disfigure 
some of Burns’s best work. There are no ‘ charmers ’ or ‘ vernal showers ’ 
or ‘ Phoebus’s scorching beams ’, nor is there anything corresponding 
to the atmosphere of ‘ Scotch drink and Scotch religion ’ which Matthew 
Arnold deplored, while such a pidure of a peasant household as that 
contained in the eclogue, Father Come Hwome , seems to the present writer 
as superior to the much lauded Cotter’s Saturday Night as a sketch by 
J. F. Millet is superior to the best work of Morland. 

In conclusion, a word may be said concerning Barnes’s dialed!. 
There are two kinds of dialed. There is the class dialed, which is merely 
a vulgarization of the £ standard ’ or £ literary ’ language, and there is the 
‘ local ’ dialed, which has come down by independent descent from a form 
of the language which was once itself a Standard speech. The Dorset 
English of Barnes, like the Anglo-Scottish dialed of the Lowlands and 
like the modern Provencal, belongs to the second of those categories. It 
is descended from the language of King Alfred, juft as the modern Pro¬ 
vencal is descended from the language of the troubadours. In the dis¬ 
sertation prefixed to his first colledion of poems, Barnes shows conclusively 
that the case and tense systems of Dorset English are essentially the same 
as those of the language of Alfred, and that its sounds are certainly the 
descendants of the sounds of the old Wessex literary language, and he 


81 



WESSEX 


proves his contention in a Striking way by translating passages from the 
Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels into modern Dorset. Barnes is 
a poet-philologiSt of the same type as Frederic Mistral, the reviver 
of the ancient language of Provence. Such men furnish a convincing 
disproof of the fashionable modern notion that scholarship and poetry 
are mutually antipathetic. They were attraded by the beauty and raciness 
of linguistic forms which had been despised for centuries, but which now 
appeared full of freshness and vitality, as compared with a Standard speech 
which was becoming jejune and lifeless. In this connexion it is interest¬ 
ing to notice that the beauty of the Dorset English of Barnes consists, not 
only in the use of such fine racy dialed words as ‘ blooth ’ ( = masses of 
blossom), ‘ parrick ’ ( = a small enclosed field), ‘ drongway 5 ( = a lane), 
etc., but also in giving new life to words which have become the mere 
counters of the professional versifier in Standard English. The word 
‘ maiden ’, for instance, in Blacktnore Maidens and other poems of Barnes 
acquires an entirely fresh life. It is no conventional ornament, but a 
word which is at once full of poetry and part of a living speech. 

The existence of true local dialeds is a source of Strength to a language. 
Standard English has been enriched by contad with such dialeds in the 
paSt and can be further enriched in the future. A speaker at a recent 
ceremony in honour of Mistral said that the poet c had been accused of 
regionalism which was prejudicial to the unity of France, but such a 
charge could not be substantiated. The French language was sufficiently 
Strong to allow the existence of Provencal, Breton, and Alsatian ’. Surely 
the same can be said of English. Our true local dialeds are being rapidly 
replaced by degenerate class dialeds. But some of them may Still be 
saved, as they have been saved in Scotland and in France. One day, 
Wessex—which is hardly inferior to Provence in historical and literary 
associations—may reawaken to a cultural life comparable to that of the 
land of Mistral. When that day comes, Barnes will, no doubt, be hon¬ 
oured in Wessex as Mistral is honoured in France. Local patriotism may 
then be equal to the task of colleding and editing the whole of his volu¬ 
minous works. Long before that date, however, it is to be hoped that a 
complete colledion of his poems, with an adequate memoir, appreciation, 
and glossary, and the original dissertation of the edition of 1844, may be 
available. The produdion of such a volume might be an appropriate task 
for a Department of English Literature in an institution which aspires to 
become the University of Wessex. 

V. DE SOLA PINTO. 


82 


CLAUDIAN AND HIS EPIC OF PROSERPINE 


(Based on a lecture delivered to the Southampton branch of the Classical 

Association) 

C LAUDIAN is the last of the Latin classics, as his contemporary, 
Prudentius, is the first great Christian Latin poet. They are, 
says Dr. J. W. Mackail, ‘ like the figures which are fabled to 
Stand regarding the rising and setting sun by the Atlantic gates where the 
Mediterranean opened into the unknown Western seas ’. Prudentius was 
a Spaniard who, with the rich imaginativeness and glowing enthusiasm of 
his race, set forth the new themes of the Christian faith in verse which 
shows a complete maStery of all the forms of Latin metre. Claudian, who 
was his equal in the skill and versatility of his poetic Style, was born in 
Alexandria and began writing in Greek : a fragment of an epic, Giganto- 
machia , is Still extant in that language. But, coming to Rome, where he 
held a position in the Civil Service till his death, he won a great reputation, 
as a kind of imperial poet laureate, in the Stormy period which followed the 
death of Theodosius and ended in the capture of Rome by Alaric in 408. 
This fatal issue the poet did not live to see. He died in 404, leaving a 
notable heritage of official poetry, including brilliant panegyrics on the 
Emperor Honorius and his general Stilicho; fierce inveftives against 
Rufinus, the prefect of Arcadius, the Eastern Emperor; Eutropius, 
chamberlain of the Constantinople Court; and poems on the Gildonic 
and Gothic wars—all of considerable value to the historian of the period, 
as the reader of Gibbon knows. For these achievements Claudian received 
in his lifetime the honour of a public Statue erefted to his honour— 
praegloriosissmo poetarum —in the Forum of Trajan: the inscription is 
preserved in the Naples Museum. 

Claudian’s interest in Christianity is represented by two short poems. 
In lacohum and De Salvatore. The latter celebrates, with irreproachable 
orthodoxy and in excellent hexameters, the truth of the Incarnation, ending 
with a prayer to the Saviour to bless the Emperor : 

feStis ut saepe diebus 
annua sinceri celebret ieiunia sacri. 

But his interest in Christianity is clearly detached ; nor can it be said that 
in the poem De Kaptu Vroserpinae , when dealing with a theme of extra- 

83 



WESSEX 


ordinary importance in the evolution of classical religion, he feels deeply 
what may be called the religious aspeCt of the legend. He possessed a 
very complete knowledge of the ancient mythology, which is impressed 
into everything he wrote with almost wearisome insistency. But in this 
respeCt he is but following the convention of the classical writers and 
especially the Alexandrine school. Like Prudentius, he had learnt his art 
from Virgil; but his patriotic love of Rome and the old regime was not 
combined with the human tenderness and more than human pity which 
makes his master’s poetry unique in Roman literature. Nevertheless, 
there is a Strain of pathos in the Rape of Proserpine which suggests that he 
is breaking through the rather frigid self-repression of the Court poet and 
is conscious of the elemental sadness of human experience. Can it be 
that one of the loveliest of all classical legends has touched him to finer 
issues as he recalls its symbolic rendering of the faCfcs of death and resur¬ 
rection ? 

It is curious that he alone of all the Latin poets should give the legend 
an epic setting. It falls into Ovid’s scheme in the Fasti and Metamorphoses , 
and is treated with that poet’s usual felicity and charm of manner, while, 
of course, Latin poetry abounds in allusions to the Story. But we have 
to go back to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter for the first, and in fad the 
only, distinctive treatment in Greek literature. There it is associated with 
Eleusis and the celebration of what was the chief ‘ mystery ’ of the Hellenic 
world. The worship of the Earth-mother, Demeter, and her daughter, 
Kore, or Persephone, who represents the new blade of corn, is closely 
conne&ed in Greek religion with the cult of the Magna Mater, the Rhea- 
Cybele of Crete and Asia Minor, if indeed the two cults are not really to 
be identified. It is this connection which explains what readers of Claudian 
may feel to be the unnecessary absence of Ceres from Proserpine when the 
rape takes place. This, therefore, is the ultimate meaning of the poem. 
It typifies the most primitive of all nature-concepts—the miracle of the 
seed-corn, which dies to live : the young Proserpine rapt into Hades by 
the Lord of Death, whilst Nature, the Earth-mother, waits in anguish 
and solitariness for the return of the lost glory. The pathos of aut umnal 
maturity appealed to Milton. 

. . . that fair field 

Of Enna where Proserpine, gathering flowers. 

Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis 
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain 
To seek her through the world— 


84 



CLAUDIAN AND HIS EPIC OF PROSERPINE 


the lyric joy of youth’s springtide to Shakespeare, whose Perdita cries : 

O Proserpina, 

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let’St fall 
From Dis’s waggon I daffodils. 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty. 

Can it be that Claudian is giving expression to a latent romanticism 
hitherto kept under by his political preoccupations and patriotic labours ? 
MoSt critics would scout the idea, and not without reason. But Claud- 
ian’s picture of the old man of Verona in a short poem which glorifies the 
simple life of the country-side, and that of Ceres Struck dumb with anguish 
when she finds the house bereft of her daughter, and the rendering of her 
successive moods of rage and sorrow and resignation, may be quoted on 
the other side. The poem is unfinished—perhaps cut short by the poet’s 
death—and the beautiful incident of Ceres’ visit to the house of Celeus, 
where, disguised as an aged nurse, she Strives in vain to secure immortality 
for Demophoon, the infant of the household, and the final restoration of 
Proserpine to the upper air with a six or (eight) months’ annual reprieve— 
these remain untold. How far the figure of the sorrowing mother of 
Proserpine may have given rise to, or at least supported, the sentiment 
which, in the fourth century, issued in the worship of the Virgin-mother 
of Christ, Mater dolorosa , is a speculation which powerfully appeals to 
minds attracted by the interaction of Christianity and paganism. 

But let us turn to the poem itself. It opens with a Stately prooemium 
and then discloses the theme : 

How Love found out a way to break the heart. 

The iron heart of Dis: how Proserpine 
In her despite was ravished, yet did gain 
Illimitable chaos as her dower : 

Say o’er what winding shores her mother roamed 
In wan, sick-hearted quest of her she bore ; 

Say whence there came to man the bounteous fruits. 

And how the oak Dodonian lo& her sway. 

The acorn yielding to the new-found grain. 

Pluto seeks a wife ; the Fates protest, but Jupiter yields to his request and 
announces Proserpine as the chosen bride. Then Ceres is introduced, 
withstanding all suitors to her daughter’s hand, and at length entrusting 
the loved child to a safe haunt in Sicily, while she is absent at the shrine 





WESSEX 


of Cybele on Mount Ida. To Venus is given the task of alluring the 
maiden and awakening Pluto’s ardour: 

Why leave unstirred 
The nether realms ? . . . 

Touch with thine arrow spells, to gende dreams, 

Sad Acheron and adamantine Dis. 

Venus, accompanied by Pallas and Diana, sets forth on her errand : 

Before their sacred feet the pathway gleamed. 

As when some comet, boding fearful doom. 

Shoots forth a flying trail of blood-red fire, 

A ruddy portent marked as omen grim 
By trembling sailors and by city crowds. 

Its threatening locks or Storms betokening 
For ships, or foeman’s onward march for towns. 

Proserpine softly singing the while to herself is embroidering a gift for 
her mother on her return—a descriptive passage that won the praise of 
Walter Pater in his memorable essay on Demeter and Persephone. Claud- 
ian’s love of colour, its tints and combinations, and his sense of Nature’s 
variegated splendour here finds notable expression ; even the underworld 
has a place in the design : 

Nor did the omen fail: 

For sudden, as by some dim prescience waked, 

A Storm of weeping brake adown her cheeks. 

And now upon the tissue’s utmost marge 
She had begun to trace the winding curves 
Of Ocean river and its glassy fords. 

When the hinge turns and she perceives the Three 
Draw nigh, and unfulfilled leaves her task. 

The Steeds of Pluto are harnessed; and in Book II, whose theme is 
Proserpine (the central figure of Book III is Ceres), we see her clad in a 
robe of lovely design, seeking the flowery glades of Henna, accompanied 
by her train of nymphs. Zephyr’s artistry has created a landscape rich 
with the hues of fresh green and brilliant flowers—roses and violets, 
marjoram and hyacinth—and with woods of pine and other trees : 

Oaks dear to Jove, and cypress shading tombs. 

Bee-haunted holm-oak, fate-foreknowing bay. 

Here down from its massed creSt the box-tree shakes : 

There ivy creeps and vines array the elms : 

86 



CLAUDIAN AND HIS EPIC OF PROSERPINE 


Hard by, a lake (Pergus its native name) 

Spreads out, and through the fringe of leafy woods 
Its pale shore-waters gleam: eyes that see deep 
May test their skill: wide is the limpid flow 
That to its depths draws the unhindered gaze 
And shows the secrets of its crystal heart. 

Pluto approaches, as Proserpine with eager joy plucks the blossoms—a 
lovely scene in which Claudian is at his beft : 

She heaps the spoil 
Of woodland blooms in osier-baskets gay. 

And now she twines the flowers in one and crowns 
Herself unwitting, omen dread of wedlock’s doom. 

The goddesses share her youthful ardour : Pallas’ warlike mien is softened, 
and the Huntress decks herself with flowers. Then the island quakes ; 
the Stars change their orbits ; the air is poisoned by the foul breath of 
Pluto’s Steeds. And, in spite of the intervention of Pallas' and Diana, 
Proserpine is carried off in the chariot of the Lord of Hades. She is 
terror-Stricken, and vainly cries to her mother for help. Pluto Strives to 
comfort her with gentle speech, promising a realm where the Elysian sun 
shines, where are soft meads and undying flowers ; and also a seat of 
judgment where, by her verdift, the guilty will be condemned and the 
good find peace. Hades is entered; all punishments cease—Ixion’s 
wheel, tortures of Tantalus and Tityos—death for the time is no more. 
The nuptials are celebrated with joy amidst the paeans of the bleSt. 

This event has its effeft on the order of Nature, hitherto wild and 
uncultivated. An assembly of the gods, at the opening of Book III, is 
addressed by the Father of gods and men, and the decree is issued that 
Ceres shall seek for her lost child until she learns the truth, and thereupon 
shall accord to man the gift of corn. The scene shifts to Mount Ida, where 
Ceres is haunted by fears and horrid dreams. In her sleep, Proserpine 
appears : 

Not as she walked of yore on Sicily’s lawns. 

Nor as she was in Henna’s rose-clad glades 
What time the goddesses beheld her. Now 
Her hair more beauteous than gold was dimmed, 

And night had dulled the splendour of her eyes ; 

Her blush, the radiant veil of her proud face. 

Was blanched by piercing ice, and now her limbs. 

Which once shone whiter than the froft of dawn. 

Had darkened to the hues of her dark realm. 

8 ? 




WESSEX 


Ceres cries out: 


Art thou my child ? , 
My very own ? or doth a ghoSt deceive ? 


Bidding a frenzied farewell to Cybele, she journeys in haSte to Sicily and 
reaches the house where Proserpine lived. It is empty and silent; and, 
chilled to the marrow by anxiety, she crawls through each vacant room : 


And recognizes the half-rended web. 

Its threads all-tangled and the shutde’s work 
Broke off. The goddess’ toil had come to naught. 
And now a spider bold was filling up 
What yet remained with sacrilegious web. 

No tears she shed, nor yet bewailed the ill: 
Only the loom she kisses and to silence chokes 
Pier plaints among the threads, and fondles close. 
As ’twere her child, the spindles which her hands 
Had worn, the tasks which she had thrown aside 
And scattered relics of her maiden sport. . . . 

* * * * * 

Like to a shepherd by his empty Stalls 
AghaSt, whose herd by Punic lions fierce 
Or band of raiders sudden had been seized. 

Returned too late across his wasted lands. 

He calls his kine who ne’er will answer more. 


Then Ceres finds her old nurse, Eleftra, who tells the glory of the guile of 
Venus and its fatal issue. Ceres breaks into fierce anger against the 
goddesses and mounts to the circle of the gods to utter her bitter rage. 
By Jove’s decree no answer is given and she then breaks into soliloquy : 

All have gone. Ah me, why vainly linger here ? 

Wist not ’tis open warfare with high heaven ? 

Nay ! rather seek thy child o’er land and sea. 

I gird myself to range the days : I fare 
Tireless by winding paths : no rest, no sleep. 

No pausing for one hour until I find 
My ravished pride. . . . 

Trample me down : proud lord ye in the sky ! 

O’er Ceres’ child your splendid triumph win ! 

On Mount Etna she prepares her torches for the journey. The landscape 
of the mountain, with its sacred grove decked with the spoils taken from 
the Giants after their vain attack on Jove, with its hidden fires and thunder- 

88 




CLAUDIAN AND HIS EPIC OF PROSERPINE 


ings, is vividly described. Ceres starts on her travels and thus apostro¬ 
phizes Proserpine: 

Not these the torches, Proserpine, I hoped 
To bear for thee, but prayers all mothers pray. 

Torches to light thy couch, the nuptial-song 
That mounts the sky. . . . 

* * * * * 

Where seek thee, in what clime and neath what pole ? 

Who’ll be my guide ? What prints will show the way ? 

How know the chariot ? or who the Ravisher is ? 

Lives he on land or sea ? How shall I track 
His flying wheels ? But go I will. Where’er 
My feet a chance shall lead me, I will go. 

Let Venus’ mother know like loneliness I 
But will my toil avail ? shall I again 
Embrace thee, O my child ? Is yet unmarred 
Thy loveliness, unmarred thy radiant cheeks ? 

Or shall I wretched look on thee, perchance. 

As in my dreams thou earnest through the night ? 

The poem, which covers over eleven hundred lines, breaks off with the 
torch of Ceres lighting up the Mediterranean from the shores of Italy to 
the African coaSt. Unfinished, like Proserpine’s task, the poem ends on 
the tragic note, leaving the mind, as tragedy muft always leave it, purified 
by compassion and with the imagination awakened and alert. The 
above brief extrafts, from a version of the poem attempted by the writer, 
may perhaps give some indication of its interest and beauty. It lacks the 
touch of creative genius and has some obvious faults : but the remarkable 
ease and skilfulness of its Latinity, the brilliance of its descriptive passages 
and similes, which reveal a real sense of colour and of the beauty in Nature, 
the animation and vividness of the speeches, especially those of Ceres, 
and the Strain of pathos with which her loneliness and anguish are depicted 
—are features which entitle it to be regarded as adding a luStre of its own 
to the dying splendours of Latin classical poetry. 

R. MARTIN POPE, 


89 





ADULT EDUCATION IN WESSEX 


W ESSEX at a first sight is none too promising a locality for adult 
education, whose traditional Strongholds—urban populations 
focussed around industrial centres—are scarce here. Rural 
populations are notoriously hard to Stir. It is no longer true that they are 
coy of being organized. On the contrary they are far too well organized 
and the difficulty is one of finding the free night when the majority of 
would-be Students is not taken up with the choir pra&ice, the Women’s 
Institute, market-day and its attendant relaxations or some other of the 
manifold interests which now pervade the village. It might seem that a 
community so fully occupied Stands in little need of educational Stimulus, 
but it is from the free yet disciplined mental exercise of the good Study 
circle or class that the other more regimented activities derive some of 
their most vital qualities. That this is acknowledged by the organizers 
of existing village societies is shown by their willingness to accept educa¬ 
tional facilities. The Rural Community Councils and notably the Feder¬ 
ation of Women’s Institutes are increasingly tending to guide their local 
branches through the experience of the single recreational leCture to the 
sustained course of six, twelve or more ledures. 

Yet with all the activity in the villages there is a great deal of con¬ 
servative reluCtance to adopt new values and admit Strange persons into 
the closed circle of village life. The Women’s Institute is made up of 
familiar characters in sometimes unfamiliar roles. To form a Students’ 
group would be to let in the draught of alien personality and suspeCt views 
in the shape of the tutor or lecturer. Let the shameless and shallow 
* towny ’ rush to exchange confidences with an outsider. His problems 
like his breeding are artificial and ephemeral, a mushroom of the moment 
compared with the age-old oak of true rustic dignity and tradition. 

If this be a fanciful explanation of the difference between urban 
readiness and rural reluctance to adopt the adult class, the faCt nevertheless 
remains and provides one of the moSt difficult of problems. It is that of 
finding the right tutor for the Pioneer Class. He must be qualified by 
knowledge to teach his subjeCt; he muSt understand the technique of this 
particular type of teaching—and it is a special technique—and he muSt 
know in detail the fives of the class of people he teaches, or preferably be 
known personally by them. Fortunately people with these qualifications 
are to be found though not in sufficient number : and the problem of the 
supply of tutors remains a difficult one. It is exaggerated by the forbid- 


90 



ADULT EDUCATION IN WESSEX 


ding if not impossible nature of cross-country travelling. In several 
cases a two hours’ class has entailed a journey of even eight hours. 

Field work has been much Strengthened by the establishment of the 
Southern District of the Workers’ Educational Association. In fa£fc at 
the present moment the burden of the work rests on its shoulders. The 
Department for Extra-Mural Studies was instituted at the College only 
two years ago and has been handicapped by a change of secretaries within 
that short period. Nevertheless it has now an efficient system and is 
ready to take a full and developing place and to look hopefully for achieve¬ 
ment within the coming session. The College and the workers’ organiza¬ 
tions work together in Joint Committee for the creation of Tutorial 
Classes which run for a period of three years, and separately for the 
establishment of One-year Classes and Terminal Classes on the one hand 
and University Extension Courses on the other. Close co-operation, 
however, is needed over the whole field of organization and nothing 
could be more satisfaftory than the progress already obtained and that 
further in view in this respect. 

It is naturally in the home county that moSt work has been done. 
Hampshire is tolerably well served in adult education. During the past 
session there have been nine Tutorial Classes, eight University Extension 
Classes and fifty One-year, Terminal and Pioneer Courses. Vigorous 
progress in all these varieties is expefted in the forthcoming session. In 
the Isle of Wight the record is less cheering. Two University Extension 
Courses and one One-year Class are the full tally. Next year there are to 
be at lea^t five or six University Extension Courses but Still more might be 
done if lecturers had wings. The difficulties of travelling are here so acute 
—a class inevitably means a night spent in the Island—that the only 
satisfactory solution for the future seems to lie in the appointment of a 
part-time resident tutor. Sussex promises very interesting developments. 
An experiment in close co-operation between the W.E.A. and the Extra- 
Mural Department is projected with which the Women’s Institutes are 
associated. The Rural Community Council is vigorous and the Education 
Committee of the WeSt Sussex County Council is helping generously with 
financial backing. The two University Extension Classes and twelve 
One-year and Terminal Classes of this year should be multiplied more than 
once over in next session’s work. In EaSt Dorset distance again is an 
obstacle, added to which is the fa£t that the ground is well traversed by 
Oxford University Extension Societies. Only one Extension Course 
and six One-year and Terminal Courses were held laSt year. Wiltshire is 
as yet an unmined field and its possibilities are to speculate upon. 

9 1 





WESSEX 


The summary Statement of this year’s programme shows nine Tutorial 
Classes, fourteen University Extension Courses varying from twelve to 
six lectures and about eighty One-year, Terminal and short Pioneer 
Courses. The subjects treated were as follows: 



No. OF 

Classes 

Subject 

W.E.A. 

University 

Extension 

National and Local Government, Citizenship, 

etc. 21 

3 

Economics 

20 

2 

Economic Geography 

3 

1 

History 

17 


Literature 

23 

4 

Science 

2 


Psychology 

3 

2 

Music 

1 


Appreciation of Art 


2 


90 

14 

Altogether upwards of 2,000 Students used the courses. 



The coming year promises a pronounced increase in the work of the 
Joint Committee and the Workers’ Educational Association and a very 
great development in the Extension Courses. Several well-begotten 
Extension Societies are coming to birth in the autumn and a dignified 
series of leftures is to be founded in Winchester, which, it is hoped, will 
become an institution not unworthy of that ancient seat, and which is to be 
inaugurated by a course by the Dean of St. Paul’s. 

The record of the past is not too bad when it is considered that both 
the responsible organizations are Still in their cradle Stage. On the whole 
however, we had best look forward with ambition and justifiable hope, 
rather than backward with pride. Adult education is Everyman’s 
University and, so far as popularizing learning is concerned, may claim 
to Stand in the same relation to the provincial universities as the latter do 
to the ancient universities. To-day truth no longer Stagnates at the 
bottom of a well. It is published with illustrations in fortnightly numbers 
and broadcast through the ether. Of its springs some are clear, some 
turbid, but they flow freely. To hold or gain ground learning is being 
forced to compete with more frivolous interests and there is a danger that, 
in adopting some of their seduftions it will slide down hill from a worthy 
ideal of popularization into mere vulgarization. A success which reveals 


92 


ADULT EDUCATION IN WESSEX 

itself solely in a multiplication of numbers of classes and Students is one 
which I think ought to be regarded with suspicion. The quality which 
ought to pervade the work in this district is one dire&ly related to the 
diStri&’s needs and nature. Whatever the class subject may be— 
economics, literature, history—though the fads imparted must be different, 
yet the spirit that animates these different fa&s, and the essence of the con¬ 
clusions drawn from them should be such as to enrich not an individual 
intelleftual life only, but a social and specifically rural life. The means are 
not yet apparent whereby this unifying spirit can be breathed into the large 
and increasing numbers of individuals who share as Students, tutors and 
organizers in the adult educational movement in Wessex, but I believe 
they muSt be anxiously sought. 

A. TOMLINSON. 



93 
















JOHN WESLEY HORROCKS 

I F human language is inadequate to paint the glory of the sky above 
the weltering sun, Still less is it adequate to portray a human per¬ 
sonality. On sitting down to write a biographical notice we are 
conscious of the impression of a personality, and, in Striving to reduce our 
subject to words, the pen drives heavily as a diamond upon glass. True 
friendship never analyses; we accept our friends for what they are, not 
for the qualities they possess. Moreover, Rudolf Otto has taught us that 
intellectual concepts can never exhauSt the content of an idea, and insists 
that the totality of all rational description Still leaves out of count elements 
that are perceived, not by thought, but by feeling. And it is juSt this that 
makes the task of the biographer so overwhelmingly difficult; words fail 
us like a weapon shivered in our grasp. Probing a personality and 
reducing it to words feels akin to the sin of looking into the Ark. 

In writing of John Wesley Horrocks, this difficulty comes home with 
peculiar intensity. It was so very specially the man that aroused our 
interest, won our admiration, engaged our affeCtions. He was neither 
brilliant nor famous; he hazarded no daring hypothesis to go down to 
history by his name, nor did he conduct some epoch-making experiment. 
To the great world his existence was unknown, he passed in and out 
amongst us in Southampton almost unnoticed. It is only the shock of his 
sudden death on January 19th, and the sense of the empty chair, which has 
forced us to attempt a little analysis, and to ask ourselves what it was, 
among those who knew him, that constituted his special charm, and why it 
is that his removal has left so large a void. Here time helps, for, as the 
impression of his personality gradually recedes, the characteristics of his 
genius (for he had genius) become more plainly visible. 

Horrocks was distinguished by the possession of a head and a heart in 
proportion to his massive frame. Many of the qualities which in others 
are taken as the product of grace seemed in him to be natural endowments 
—humility, fortitude, love of truth, sympathy. Utterly devoid of 
ambition or personal vanity, he threw his whole soul into his various 
projeCls with selfless devotion. A born investigator, in his historical 
researches he never rested content with the judgment of others, nor relied 
upon the accuracy of their facts. Each authority he weighed, each fact he 
searched out afresh. No one ever followed the advice of the centenarian 
Martin James Routh—‘ verify your references ’—with closer application, 
and, had he attempted to write history, his single aim, like Creighton’s, 

94 




JOHN WESLEY HORROCKS 


would have been ‘ to write true history This attention to detail alike 
added to and detracted from his eminence as an historian. It added, inas¬ 
much as his opinions were founded upon original authorities, upon the 
exploration of untrodden and neglefted by-paths, and upon the ruthless 
testing of popular beliefs ; it detracted, because in a certain sense it left 
the wood obscured by the trees. He preferred the use of the microscope 
to that of the telescope. His learning was principally effective in out-of-the- 
way knowledge. Thus, although his essay on the influence of the 
principles of Macchiavelli upon English politics gained him the coveted 
degree of DoCtor of Letters from London University, the philosophy of 
history was only secondarily his preoccupation ; he was more at home in 
the reading-room of the British Museum, or among the muniments of the 
local archives at Southampton. 

The objects to which Horrocks applied his microscope were generally 
to be found close at hand, available from personal association or local 
tradition. His interest in the reputed finding of the timbers of the May¬ 
flower. grew, for instance, out of his Nonconformist upbringing and the 
association of that somewhat overrated vessel with the port of Southamp¬ 
ton. Once his interest was kindled, he set off to investigate in various 
directions, his journeys including visits to the Quaker settlement in the 
Chilterns and to a chapel at Newbury (where he incautiously put his foot 
through the ceiling). In the end he pulverized this fond fancy, and his 
Stock went down to zero among many pious devotees. Association with 
Hampshire was the Starting-point of many literary friendships. He 
searched out, in many a long walk, all the places of residence of W. H. 
Hudson, and became an authority upon him. Jane AuSten attracted his 
attention likewise; he found his way to Steventon and Chawton, while 
Winchester and Southampton afforded scope for research nearer home. 
At the British Museum he discovered a contemporary account of the 
journey of Charles I from HurSt CaStle to Hampton Court; the passing 
through Redbridge afterwards became an episode in the Pageant of Hamp¬ 
ton, and on January 30th, 1929, the 280th anniversary of the death of King 
Charles, The Times printed a letter from Horrocks recording his discovery, 
set out in the coveted large print, a distinction that afforded the writer 
a modeSt satisfaction. 

Towards the close of his life, Dr. Horrocks turned his attention towards 
Charles Kingsley as another Hampshire worthy, and late one autumn after- 
nood tramped out from Crowthorne to Eversley. While as to Isaac 
Watts, the legend of his birth in a house patently of later date was taken as 
a direCt challenge. Patiently Horrocks set to work to search out forgotten 

95 




WESSEX 


wills and fate-books, and his final demonstration that the illustrious Puritan 
divine could not have been born in Bugle Street, coupled with a Strong 
presumption that his birthplace Stood in the High Street, aroused no little 
animosity among those credulous folk to whom local traditions are in¬ 
violably sacrosanct. So far as we know, only in a single instance did 
Horrocks initiate an investigation beyond the county borders ; Cholderton 
Parsonage, the home of Thomas Mozley, who had married Newman’s 
sister, drew him into Wiltshire. It was from this house that Newman, in 
October 1839, first put on paper his doubts of the Anglican position after 
pondering afresh Wiseman’s famous article in the Dublin Review. c I 
assume ’, he wrote ominously, ‘ that Rome is right ’. Yet Horrocks’s 
interest, at this period, lay with Mozley rather than with Newman, pre¬ 
sumably because of Mozley’s position as a leader writer on The Times. It 
was only later that Horrocks yielded to the fascination of Newman himself. 

Nor can we pass over in silence Horrocks’s useful and laborious 
investigations among the town archives of Southampton. Once again the 
compelling interest lay in the circumstance that the archives were South¬ 
ampton archives. All ancient manuscripts to him were, as Dr. Johnson said 
of the Giant’s Causeway, c worth seeing ’, but only Southampton ones 
were ‘ worth going to see ’. Even at the British Museum his researches 
were primarily in relation to matter concerned with the town and county 
of Southampton. 

As we look back upon the sub j eft-matter of all these arduous re¬ 
searches their general tenor becomes evident. Horrocks seldom, if ever, 
initiated an investigation ; he waited until some subjeft came to hand. As 
soon as a Stimulus offered, immediately his critical faculty came into play, 
and he set out upon the venture of verification or deStruftion. Probably 
his long hours as a reporter in the House of Commons kindled his interest 
in the principles of Macchiavelli; Hudson, Jane AuSten, Kingsley, Isaac 
Watts—a Strangely discordant company—were all connefted with Hamp¬ 
shire. The link is with a place —England, Hampshire, Southampton. 
He wrote as a patriot, as a citizen, interested in his surroundings ; yet a 
discriminating patriot, for he had the courage to be a conscientious 
objeftor during the war; and a candid citizen, for many a cherished 
popular legend perished at his hands 

Horrocks’s claim to genius must be rested upon a capacity for taking 
infini te pains. Having little of the hero-worshipper, he seldom betrayed 
any interest in the personalities of those whose lives he investigated ; it 
was not the personalities themselves, but the circumstances of their lives 
that attrafted him. He made a Study of Macchiavelli, yet abhorred his 

96 


JOHN WESLEY HORROCKS 

philosophy ; if he revelled in Jane AuSten, it was not the novelist or her 
charafters, but the persons mentioned in her letters that primarily concern¬ 
ed him. If he inquired into Kingsley’s life, it was not because he was 
interested in muscular Christianity or in the establishment of social justice 
as such. He did not go to his subjefts for their literary pre-eminence, or 
their ethical teaching, or their religious influence; he devoted himself 
simply to their connection with local topography. While he passed over 
the absurdities of Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine De Bourgh, whose 
characters are household words, he thought it worth while to journey to 
West Woodhay, juSt over the confines of Hampshire, to gather information 
about the Sloper family—and their morals—merely because of a chance 
reference in one of Jane’s letters. He could have written an admirable 
introduction to a literary classic, with voluminous learned notes on the 
text; he would never have created a literary cult. 

Perhaps his gifts best found expression as a popular leCturer. _ For, 
each winter, he usually prepared a single leCture for the deleCtation of 
seleCt audiences where he was ever welcome—before the Southampton 
branch of the Historical Association) of which he was secretary for half a 
generation), literary societies, church clubs. The very titles he chose 
betray the trend of his interests ; one year he would speak on ‘ Biography ’, 
another on ‘ Anachronisms ’, another on ‘ Popular Historical Errors ’. 
Master of his subjeCt, he would speak without a note. His matter was 
attractive, his voice resonant; his periods were illumined by flashes of a 
humour all his own. Contemptuous of shams, he mercilessly exposed the 
pitfalls which historical novelists, combining a high degree of imagination 
with a painful ignorance of faCts, unconsciously dig for themselves. His 
scorn fell upon the long catena of authors of text-books who speak 
sententiously of the ‘ signing ’ of Magna Carta, driving home their point 
by a woodcut \ he would delight to show how the Chatter of English 
liberties received authorization, not by a pen, but by a seal. He told, with 
o-rim humour, the Story of the juryman in a murder trial who, having been 
?ot at, pledged himself to vote for manslaughter and obstinately Stood his 
Ground until he won over the reSt of the jury, who were for an acquittal! 

In making his researches, Horrocks pursued learning for its own sake; 
although his knowledge was at everyone’s service, he seldom attempted to 
thruSt it into the glare of publicity. Content to have verified his refer¬ 
ences, he let his information lie dormant unless provoked by inaccuracy. 
In company his excessive shyness only allowed him to open out before 
friends. In an unsympathetic atmosphere he simply froze up; in con¬ 
genial society he melted ; even so his sympathetic nature made him more 

97 



WESSEX 


teady to listen than to talk. Seldom introducing topics of his own, he 
would listen for hours to the reading of an as yet unpublished manuscript, 
bending all his energies to the unravelling of knotty points. His next 
visit to the British Museum would be sure to bring back a host of fresh 
details. Much of his leisure went in the conduit of investigations for 
friends, and we must add friendship to places as a motive for his energies. 

Are these the characteristics of a true scholar ? We think they are. 
Horrocks combined, in exquisite proportion, caution, patience, and a 
balanced judgment. In the interest of learning, it may perhaps be re¬ 
gretted that his singular qualities never found scope for ripe expression, 
and that the books on which he was supposed to be engaged—a treatise 
on Macchiavelli and a monograph upon Hudson—hardly possessed an 
existence more substantial than as projects in his brain ; and we may equally 
regret that his abilities seemed to be frittered away upon ephemeral and 
local interests, when he was capable of producing a really great work. 
But, morally, this lack of application is of little consequence. To he is 
better than to do. His loving regard for truth awoke in friends and pupils 
alike a new reverence for truth; the simplicity, humility, and singular 
unworldliness of his character, reinforced by an unswerving loyalty to 
friends and causes, left its mark upon all with whom he came into intimate 
contaft. 

His person, who can forget ? The heavy build, the massive brow, 
the Napoleonic caSt of countenance, the bushy lashes, the flashing eyes, 
the Strange nervous trick of appearing to look at you when you were at a 
disadvantage. All these impressed themselves indelibly upon the imagin¬ 
ation. There were so many engaging traits in this unusual personality. 
In him were blended Strength and tenderness, loyalty and candour. 
Every inch a man, yet he played no games, and eschewed tobacco; his 
virtues were the virtues of childhood—affeftion, loyalty, simple faith ; it 
was impossible to. associate with him an ungenerous thought or a mean 
aftion, no complaint ever passed his lips, no uncouth expression defiled 
them. As a mentor of youth these were invaluable qualities. 

And now he is gone. University College has lost an ornament, the 
Church a faithful, son. Society mourns a friend, and youth a wise in- 
Stru&or. Keats, in bitterness of soul, wrote his own epitaph: ‘ Here 
lies a man whose fame is writ in water ’. The Abbe Huvelin bequeathed 
no volume ; his work was written in souls 5 . No monument of learning 
survives as the produft of Horrocks’s tireless energies, yet he is not for¬ 
gotten ; he leaves in many hearts the memory of a quiet and useful life of 
sincerity and loyalty. For him the search after truth is ended in the 

98 




JOHN WESLEY HORROCKS 


contemplation of the eternal Truth in the beatific vision, and investigation 
has issued into adoration. He was an ordinary man who by unwearying 
patience demonstrated genius. The permanence of his memory depends 
upon the extent to which he has been able to communicate his enthusiasm 
to others; it may well be that when we have forgotten all he did we shall 
Still remember all he was. 

J. L. BEAUMONT JAMES. 


VERSES 

Written in an album by the late Dr. J. W. Horrocks when Barbara, a friend’s 
daughter (born A.ugufi 2, 1914), was only a few days old. 

S O, Barbara, in this dreadful time 

when reason wanes and woes increase, 
you’ve come to earth, a little joy, 
a litde gift and pledge of peace. 

And while the nations Strain and Strive 
with sword and gun, in war’s alarms, 
you sleep, in all-unknowing trust, 
secure within your mother’s arms, 

a promise of the time when men, 
no longer barbarous and wild, 
shall live together in the faith 
of Barbara the little child. 



99 







ROBERT BRIDGES, 
1844-1930 


A YEAR ago the late Poet Laureate showed his interest in the move¬ 
ment for a University of Wessex by allowing us to print in our 
laSt number his fine letiure on poetry delivered as the first of the 
National Lectures of the British Broadcasting Corporation. A short 
time before the present number of Wessex was in the hands of the printers 
it was known that Mr. Bridges was dead. It is therefore considered fitting 
that this number should contain some appreciation, however inadequate, 
of the genius of this great Englishman. The words of Milton are alone 
appropriate to the circumstance in which the moSt Miltonic figure in 
modern English literature died : 

His servant he with new acquift 

Of true experience from this great event 

With peace and consolation hath dismiSt, 

And calm of mind all passion spent. 

Robert Bridges died, like the hero of Milton’s drama, at the moment of 
viftory. His greatest poem, which he had been planning and meditating 
for years, had been completed and published. It had been acclaimed by 
all competent critics in the English-speaking countries as a masterpiece, 
and had completely silenced the complaints of ignorant critics who were 
incapable of understanding his greatness, and had invented the foolish 
legend of the ‘ Laureate’s Silence ’. 

To many readers the early work of Bridges was a revelation of the 
possibilities of modern English poetry. Those wonderful Shorter Poems, 
with Eros and Psyche, The Growth of Love, and the two lovely Masks (now 
all obtainable together in the excellent one-volume Oxford edition) showed 
that it was possible to escape from the prison-house of the Vitiorian 
tradition without adopting the sickly affectations of the decadents, or the 
boisterous vulgarity of the school of Llenley. Here was a poet who seemed 
to have brought back the beSt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
the lovely music of Campion and the gracious refinement of the young 
Milton, and who was, nevertheless, no imitator, but an original creative 
power. 


100 



ROBERT BRIDGES 


Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, 

And bright in the fruitful valleys the Streams, wherefrom 
Ye learn your song : 

Where are those Starry woods ? O might I wander there. 

Among the flowers, which in the heavenly air 
Bloom the year long ! 

There had been no such clear and spontaneous music in the English 
lyric since the Elizabethan song-books. Yet there are poems in these 
early collections which no Elizabethan could have written. The greatest of 
them all, the lines On a Dead Child, reminds us, not only that Bridges was a 
physician, but his mind was essentially modern in the sense that the 
minds of a Plato or a Pascal are modern, and essentially philosophical. 

Then there are the New Poems and the Odes, including the great Ode 
to Musie written for the bicentenary Commemoration of Henry Purcell , with its 
ravishing ninth Stanza which has been reprinted as a separate poem. 
There are the plays, among which is that crown jewel of modern poetic 
drama, Achilles in Scyros, a kind of classical counterpart to The Tempeft, 
uniting Elizabethan colour and fantasy with the clear outlines of Hellenic 
art. The Poems in Classical Prosody are a Stumbling-block to the tradition¬ 
alist and foolishness to the Philistine, but for those who take the trouble to 
read Bridges’s book on Milton’s Prosody, and to follow the great experiment 
sympathetically, there are many delights in Store, and even those who have 
no ear for ‘ quantity ’ in English can appreciate such a poem as the majestic 
scazons called fohannes Milton Senex, perhaps the greatest English religious 
poem since the seventeenth century: 

Since I believe in God the Father Almighty, 

Man’s Maker and Judge, Overruler of Fortune, 

’Twere Strange should I praise anything and refuse him praise. . . . 

The beginnings of the laSt phase of Bridges’s art are perhaps to be 
found in the curiously negleCted volume called October and Other Poems 
which appeared in 1920. This book contains poems, like October and 
The Flowering Tree, which might have been written thirty years before, and 
have the same enchanting music as the poems of the ’eighties and ’nineties. 
But, beside these, there are others in an entirely new manner at once 
philosophic and deeply religious. Such is the brilliant and enigmatic 
Narcissus, one of the poet’s profoundeSt utterances, The Excellent Way, 
and, above all, the great Christmas poem, Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913, 
and its noble counterpart dated 1917. But it was in the volume that 


101 



WESSEX 


appeared in 1925, called New Verse, that the new manner is fully developed. 
Here for the first time the poet completely reveals the power of his supreme 
metrical invention; the flexible twelve-syllable line of The TeBament of 
Beauty, which was the final result of his many experiments to find an escape 
from the tired, traditional tunes, while avoiding the shapelessness of 
‘ free verse 

Much of the first section of New Verse reads like a series of Studies for 
The TeBament of Beauty. Kate’s Mother, Come Si Ouando, and The College 
Garden might be extra&s from the later poem. They are poetry of the 
speaking rather than the singing voice, yet poetry that is illuminated by 
a visionary power which can transfigure the moSt prosaic subj eft-matter. 
This poet of eighty-one was succeeding in doing what nearly all his 
younger contemporaries had been attempting for a quarter of a century. 
Of The TeBament of Beauty itself it would be impertinent to pretend to give 
a full description in such narrow limits as those of the present note. It 
might be called a complete image of the modern mind at its finest and 
subtlest set in the framework of the great Platonic myth of the Chariot of 
the Soul. It is undoubtedly the greatest long English poem since The 
Prelude, never, perhaps, rising as high as the peaks of Wordsworth’s 
inspiration, but excelling his poem in humour and in intellectual quality. 
It will probably be recognized in the future as the one great philosophic 
poem of the modern world. Bridges has shown that it is possible to 
achieve a poem on the grand scale which is wholly modern in spirit and 
has attained the highest beauty without borrowing the antiquated up¬ 
holstery of primitive myth or legend. 

The activities of Robert Bridges were by no means confined to poetry. 
He was a great artist in the widest sense of the word, championing the 
claims of the spirit in many directions. His services to English Church 
music were important, and he widened the meaning of the office of Poet 
Laureate by assuming the guardianship of the beauty of the English 
language and of the English country-side. 

The fine obituary notice in The Times described his character as 
‘aristocratic and unconventional, virile and affectionate, fearlessly in¬ 
quiring, and profoundly religious ’. He Stands beside Spenser, Milton 
Wordsworth, and Shelley as one of the great line of English poet-prophets. 
His work should be a well-spring of spiritual life to the England of the 
twentieth century, 

V. DE S. P. 


102 


SONNET COMPETITION 


T HREE sonnets 1 of very considerable merit have been submitted in 
this competition, and my difficulty in deciding which moSt deserves 
the prize is so great as to make me somewhat regret having under¬ 
taken the adjudication. 

Each sonnet has points of superiority to its two competitors, but 
each sonnet has also defers, and on the balance between them I have to 
decide which gives the best result. Form, sound, and content I take as 
the three qualities of main importance. 

The terms for the competition expressly make ‘ any rime-scheme 
admissible ’, but, none the less, the rime-scheme chosen must be open to 
criticism. The writer of e Words ’ has taken a small liberty of departure 
from orthodox form in the odtave—a liberty that has been taken by 
Wordsworth and others, the use of four rhymes instead of two—and a 
large liberty in the seStet. It is this laSt liberty which I criticize. Three 
couplets do not give to the sestet that cumulative value preparatory to 
the closing lines which the non-Shakespearean sonnet seems to demand ; 
the effedt produced is too Static and rigid, and this is increased by the 
number of full Stops. In the whole sonnet there are nine; one or two 
(that in line eight for instance) might be dispensed with, and a colon 
substituted ; but moSt of them are true full Stops, and the sonnet in con¬ 
sequence lacks fluidity. The thought is good throughout; for content 
I think this sonnet Stands first, though ‘ QuaeStio ’ runs it close. £ Break 
ye the voice: the word cannot be broken ’ is a fine line, and it is well 
followed. The thought carries on finely to the end. Had the seStet not 
been a set of three couplets I should have awarded this sonnet the prize. 

c Write me a Sonnet ’ is the most melodious of the three, but it is a 
melody that is fairly easy for a practised verse-writer to extract from such a 
subjedt. It is not hard to make a pleasant play of sound out of the beauties 
of nature. But the melody decisively diminishes in lines 5, 6, and 7 when 
these aids to music are hitched off. Line 10 ,1 take to be a misprint of the 
typist’s. 2 It has no possible scansion. If there is a missing ‘ an ’ before 
‘ exquisite ’ the line is still not good. The next three lines are very good ; 
the last line, in spite of its assertion, is a failure. This sonnet has less 
originality or force of thought than the other two. This and ‘ QuaeStio ’ 

1 The sonnets are printed on pp. 104, 105. 

2 There was no error in the typescript—(Ed. Wessex). 


103 




WESSEX 


are both thoroughly orthodox in form as regards the rime-scheme. In 
the separation of sestet from octave, ‘ QuaeStio ’ is the more successful. 
For sonnet-form, I think it is the best. It does not begin well, but it gets 
into its Stride all right in lines 3 and 4. The latter half of the oflave is 
rather lacking in construction—the grammar a bit vague. Here also 
comes the main defeat of the poem : the word ‘ slime ’ fights moSt un¬ 
happily with the rhyme * divine 5 which follows it. The seStet opens 
with a weak line, but this does not damage the general effeft of the close, 
which works up to an excellent finish. It is emotional, melodious, and 
well thought out. There is also a happy freedom in carrying on the 
sentence from line to line; there is even value in parting the adjeftive 
‘mad’ from its noun ‘ terror ’ in the line following, but to get that value 
the poem needs a good reader. To this I award the prize. 

If I am expected to give second place, I award it to ‘ Words ’ . I 
congratulate all three competitors on their good efforts. 

LAURENCE HOUSMAN. 

N.B.—The following are the three sonnets in the order in which they have been 
placed by Mr. Housman. Nos. 2 and 3 are the work of Students of University College, 
Southampton, now in residence—(Ed. Wessex) : 

I 

QUAESTIO 

The hints of God, the hints of power malign— 

The sunset here, and there Vesuvius glows ! 

Cyclone and canker, June and the wild rose. 

Cockroach and viper, apricot and vine— 

Portents diverse, but no conclusive sign! 

The soul of man, a will o’ the wisp that shows 
And fades above the foetal slime, who knows. 

Or deathless hung in firmaments divine ? 

Who knows, and who would not even prefer 
Such boundary set to knowledge—not be sad 
If no such undiscover’d land there were 
Beyond the charted paradise, no mad 
Terror, and no wild hope, no thunder-clad 
Horizon, and no lone adventurer? 

A. Romney Green, 

25 Bridge Street, Christchurch. 

104 



SONNET COMPETITION 


2 

WORDS 

We have imposed significance in sound, 

And in the hazard placing of a Stroke. 

Until the hour when first the first man spoke 

The grave child Thought lay cradled, mute, and bound. 

Saved from the shattered paSt, or yet unspoken. 

The immortal phrases hold unmeasured power, 

Speech we relinquish last in the panic hour. 

Break ye the voice. The word cannot be broken. 

Of all the ghostly things that twist the heart 
Beauty alone Stands silent and apart. 

Science and love are babblers. While men think 
Some will express their bodies’ blood for ink. 

In God the first small signs of Being Stirred, 

And God, in the beginning, was the Word. 

Mary Hacker, 

University College, Southampton. 
3 

‘WRITE ME A SONNET’ 

‘ Write me a sonnet ’! Sweet, what can I write ? 

The tender beauty of a crescent moon 
In Starless skies ? The ever-changing tune 
Of pine-trees, sentinel on hills at night ? 

Smooth, sweeping downlands green ? These thoughts are trite. 
The themes of poetaster’s songs. Too soon 
You tax my energies; in this hot noon 
All inspiration’s dead. Yet you were right. 

Beauty of line and colour seems to clutch 
My heart-Strings, Striking exquisite pain, 

I muSt obey. Your voice is in the rain, 

The wind’s caress is gentle as your touch, 

And you are beauty. Do I love too much ? 

I will not fail, nor let you ask in vain. 

Barbara Benington, 
University College, Southampton. 

105 


THE STUDENTS’ UNION (1929-30) 

A STUDENTS’ UNION justifies its existence not so much by its material 
prosperity as by the spirit of good fellowship which it inspires in its members, 
and an annual report can, at best, record but half its achievements, for its less 
tangible and more far-reaching results are not such as may easily be computed. 

This Session has, however, marked a very definite Step forward in the history of 
the Union. Membership has increased by almost a third and the Stimulating effect of 
added numbers has been visible in all departments of our Student activity. The 
ample support now available has accelerated the development of Union societies and 
encouraged them to undertake more ambitious programmes. Nevertheless, our 
numerical weakness is Still such that the enthusiastic co-operation of all members is not 
only possible but necessary for the success of our various undertakings. 

Late in the Autum Term the Stage Society produced The Lali of Mrs. Cheney, the 
performance of which involved a much finer Standard of aCting and dramatic ability 
than any play hitherto attempted. This success was followed up in the Spring Term 
by the production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance by the Choral and 
Orchestral Society. The Standard of chorus work attained was particularly high, 
which reflects the enthusiasm and industry of the rank and file of the Society. Choral 
work has proved so popular that meetings have been continued during the Summer 
Term. 

The Debating Society continues to lack support, possibly owing to the heavy 
competition of its less intellectual rivals. Nevertheless, the Inter-Varsity Debate was 
even more successful than usual. Speakers showed considerably more ability than 
they have often done in the paSt, and were much more inclined to keep to the point. 
The social functions which precede and follow the Debate were thoroughly enjoyed by 
visitors and hoSts alike, whilst a fair amount of local sight-seeing was also under¬ 
taken. Representatives from our own Union have travelled to other Colleges to try 
their mettle and receive Student hospitality. 

A moSt interesting and encouraging renewal of interest in politics and government 
has taken place among Students this session and, mainly owing to the efforts of certain 
members of the Faculty of Economics, a Model Parliament has been organised and run 
with great success. 

The Athletic Union has prospered side by side with the Union itself and three 
new clubs have recently been formed. The Boat Club owes its existence mainly to 
the generosity of Mr. Casson and is now well established. The Swimming Club has 
proved exceedingly popular and the Boxing Club has afforded an outlet to those of 
pugilistic bent. Our appearance in the University Athletic Union contests has not 
been heralded with any outstanding success, but it has furnished us with a number of 
attractive fixtures. Interest in sport continues to increase Steadily and with greater 
facilities we are now able to cater for a diversity of demands. Our annual Athletic 
Sports were held for the second time on our own ground and proved most successful. 

Our connection with the National Union of Students continues to afford us 
frequent opportunities of welcoming foreign Students on their arrival at Southampton, 

106 





THE STUDENTS’ UNION (1929-30) 

and of entertaining them for a short while. Many pleasant acquaintances are thus 
formed and closer links between foreign Universities and our own College are made 
possible. 

Rapid developments are now taking place in the residential side of College life. 
The new Women’s Hall of Residence is already pardy occupied and another Men’s 
Hall is due to be opened in 1931. Internal government in the Hall s is passing more 
and more into the hands of the Students themselves, and the Union is thus enabled to 
keep more closely in touch with all residential activities. 

Many non-Union Societies are Still flourishing, although most of these are of an" 
expressly Academic nature. The Students’ Christian Movement, the League of Nations 
Union Society, the Scouts’ and Rangers’ Clubs are all doing good work and reflect 
the very varied interests which muSt, of necessity, come outside Union control. The 
Rambling Club attracts many with a love of the open air and a desire to wander. 

Social service is Still largely in the hands of Halls of Residence, the men assisting 
at Winchester Prison and the women with Play Centres. Our annual Rag, this year 
on behalf of local charities, yielded a substantial sum, and Carol Singers at Christmas 
collected some £25 for the Children’s Hospital. Both the Stage Society and the Choral 
and Orchestral Society held performances on behalf of the Appeal Fund. 

Much of the success of our Union functions has been due to the considerate co¬ 
operation which the College authorities, and especially the Principal and the Registrar 
have consistently given us. The civic authorities, moreover, were of invaluable assist¬ 
ance in the organisation of the £ Rag ’, and we are much indebted to the Mayor of 
Southampton for the help he so willingly gave us. To the Mayor of Winchester also 
we are much indebted for his assistance at our annual Sports and at the Prize 
Distribution. 

The life of the Union, we believe, is the surest indication of the healthy social 
condition of the College and we are confident that each year’s progress is bringing us 
nearer to that goal to which we all aspire—a University for Wessex. 


L. NICHOLS, 



i° 7 










THE WHITE BIRD 
bv R. A. Hodgson 

j 

I SAW a white bird flying ; 

I heard a lost child crying. 

What is your sorrow, child ? 

My bird, my bird is gone. 

It led me on and on 
Across the empty wild. 

But why did you pursue ? 

It was the faireSt thing 
That ever moved on wing. 
Brighter than moon in dew. 

Its breaSt was soft and cold ; 

Its wings were wide and white ; 
Its eyes were rubies bright; 

Its feet were yellow gold. 

I would have spun a snare, 

A slender net to cast, 

To hold those wild wings faSt 
And draw them from the air. 

Now I am left alone, 

And naked and forlorn ; 

Beyond the gates of horn 
My silver bird has flown. 

I heard a lost child crying; 

Only a lost child crying . . . 


108 


1925. 








REVIEW. 


SPECULUM RELIGIONIS. Essays and Studies in Religion and Literature from 

Plato to von Hugel presented by Members of the Staff of University College 

Southampton, to Dr. C. G. Montefiore on the occasion of his Seventieth 

Birthday. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1929. 

The now popular form of honouring a scholar by dedicating to him a volume of 
essays, written by those who have been influenced by his teachings, has a special value. 
There is a distinctive flavour in the individual essays, however various their interest and 
diverse their theme. The volume brings home to us in a peculiarly effective way the 
chara&er of our present thought and the contrast of our modern outlook with past 
cultural epochs. Historical criticism is as old as history. There is abundance of it in 
Herodotus and Thucydides. The result is not to purge old records of falsehood, but to 
write history anew. Benedetto Croce has said that all history is contemporary history 
and this does not mean merely that the past can only be interpreted in the light of the 
present, but that the writing of history, historiography, is the recording not what once 
was, but what now is. This is especially true of the historical Studies in this volume ; 
they are remarkable and enjoyable for their modernity. 

Speculum Religion is is well named. It gives us as in a mirror a particularly intimate 
reflection of the new form which religion is assuming in our generation. A most 
Striking change has taken place and it has come about within the memory of many Still 
living. It is a change in the attitude of the religious mind generally and the Christian 
m i n d in particular towards what used to be described as the ‘ impregnable rock of Holy 
Scripture ’. The Bible without losing its influence now exercises a quite different 
kind of authority. Not only is the absence of biblical quotation conspicuous but one 
writer describes ‘ know thyself’ as a scriptural injunction, and it is doubtful if it would 
occur to one in a hundred readers to challenge the authority. Religious expression 
has ceased to cling lovingly to the biblical phrasing. Even the writer on the entomology 
of the Bible confines himself to obvious identities and misses the opportunity of giving 
us the modern scientific interpretation of the fiery serpents in the wilderness. 

The new spirit of historical criticism is very clearly brought out in the excellent 
introduction essay by Mr. Burkitt on the work of Mr. Claude Montefiore himself to 
whom the volume is dedicated. The older biblical criticism from Plobbes and Spinoza 
to Bishop Colenso was concerned with textual errors of faff, with positive contradictions, 
or with implications which no kind of apologetic could explain away. The new 
criticism is profounder, more philosophical and orientated in a completely different 
direction. It is historical in a truer meaning of history. It is concerned to show how the 
religious intuitions which find free expression in the inspired prophet become petrified 
under the domination of the prieSt. The old criticism was hostile to traditional author¬ 
ity, or at least was generally so regarded, the new criticism is reverent, if not to 
the established institution, certainly to the myStery of religious experience which lies 
at their origin. 

There is a tendency among writers who take the religious experience as their theme 
to a certain regrettable looseness in their employment of the terms myStic and mysticism. 








REVIEW 


The terms are often used in an untechnical meaning which is moS unfortunate. Mys¬ 
ticism often serves to describe any kind of vagueness in expression and occasionally 
provides a ready excuse for extravagant tropes or analogies. Indeed it is often made 
an apology for undisguised failure in imaginative and intellectual expression. The 
present volume is not free from reproach in this respect. The mystical experience, if 
it be fa£t, is not ordinary but extraordinary experience. Pascal’s second conversion 
may have been a mystical experience, and in any case it may fairly be cited as evidence 
in support of the dodtrine of mysticism, whereas to call the Puritan preacher Peter 
Sterry a myStic, as one of the moSt interesting essays does, is quite unintelligible ; he was 
no more a myStic than was Pascal himself. Mysticism is a definite not an indefinite 
theory ; although by its affirmation of the non-intelle£hial nature of religious knowledge 
it cannot submit this knowledge to logical analysis. Baron von Hiigel, of whom Pro¬ 
fessor Cock writes in this volume with deep sympathetic appreciation was certainly a 
myStic, whether or not he ever had or claimed to have had the myStic experience. 

H. Wildon Carr, 

April 3, 1930. 

It is greatly regretted that a review of Dr. Wildon Carr’s important book 
Cogitans Cogitatus by Professor A. A. Cock must unavoidably be held over for the 
next number of Wessex. 



IXO 











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WESSEX 


An Annual Record of the Movement 
for a University of Wessex 
based on University College, 
Southampton. 


VOLUME I. 


1928-1930. 



WESSEX—Volume One 
1928 — 1930 . 


INDEX. 


CONTRIBUTORS. 


Kenyon, Sir F. G., iii, 58. 

Lautour, M. de, i, 55. 

Lawton, H. W., i, 26, 52. 
Leishman, J. B., ii, 60, 100. 
Bindley, J. W., iii, 61. 

Lindsay, K., ii, 58. 

Little, J. S., ii, 58. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, iii, 16. 

Lyttel, E. S., ii, 55; iii, 38. 

Macnamara, F., i, 62. 

Mangham, S., i, 95. 

Margoliouth, H. M., i, 30; ii, 80. 
Montefiore, C. G., i, 8; ii, 46. 

Nichols, L., iii, 106. 

Nichols, Robert, i, 30. 

Norman, E., ii, 78, 108. 


Beaumont James, J. L., iii, 94. 

Boas, F. S., i, 27. 

Benington, B., iii, 105. 

Bridges, R., ii, 9. 

Carton, R. L., i, 7. 

Clarence Smith, A. E., i, 97. 

Cock, A. A., i, 45; iii, 12. 

Crawford, O. G. S., i, 47. 

Crawford, S. J., i, 65; iii, 46. 

Daldy, The Ven. A. E., ii, 23. 

Deane, Mary, iii, 60. 

Eustice, J., i, 92. 

Eyres, Margaret, i, 62. 

Ford, P., ii, 42. 

Forster, Lord, iii, 1. 

Freeman, P. T., iii, 21. 

Friston, A. de, ii, 25, 45, 86, 108. 
Friston, B. de, ii, 34. 

Furley, S. J., ii, 35. 

Glover James H., i, 94. 

Green, A. Romney, i, 21, 45, 47 ; ii, 18; 
iii, 65, 104. 

Gurney Dixon, S., ii, 41, 50. 


Patchett, E. W., i, 32. 

Pinto, V. de S., i, 12, 16,39; ii, 17, 90, 103; 
iii, 20, 67, 100. 

Pope, R. Martin, ii, 105; iii, 83. 

Reed, T. Dayrell, iii, 45. 

Rishbeth, O. H. T., i, 99; iii, 28. 


Hacker, Mary, iii, 105. Saintsbury, George, i, 23. 

Hardy, H. J., ii, 51. Sassoon, Siegfried, i, 5. 

Hardy, Mrs., i, 6. Sigma, i, 15. 

Hart, M. C., i, 28; ii, 97. Stansfield, H., i, 53. 

Hodgson, R. A., ii, 79, 92; iii, 14, 27, 108. 

Horrocks, J. W., i, 56; iii, 99. Tomlinson, A., iii, 96. 

Housman, Laurence, i, 82; iii, 103. 

Hunter, Sir Mark, i, 41; ii, 61. Vickers, K. H., i, 12; iii, 9. 

Hutton, W. H., ii, 101. 

Watkins, W. J. H., ii, 107. 
Wildon Carr, H., ii, 26; iii, 109. 

UNIVERSITY GCLLESS 
SOUTHAMPTO'! 

4 DC 1944 

LL'.m.; I 

m, \ r Cl . m 

<>Voo*o o dkutr ^ iu.„ Z£,Xmji, a. . A,*,£W 


James, S. L-, i, 63. 








INDEX. 


TITLES. 

N.B.—Titles of Poems are in italics. 


Adult Education in Wessex, i, 100; 
ii, 58; iii, 90. 

Barnes, William, The Dorset Poet, iii, 67 
Biological Developments, i, 95. 

Bevis of Hamtoun, Sir, iii, 46. 

Biology, A First, ii, 107. 

Bridges, Robert, iii, 100. 

Captive Angel, The, ii, 50. 

Classical Association, i, 104. 

Claudian, iii, 83. 

Colombus, ii, 18. 

Dante, From, to Mussolini, ii, 55. 

Diana, Hymn to, ii, 60. 

Dolphin, At the, i, 56. • 

East Wind, The, iii, 45. 

Economics Society, i, 103. 

Engineering, Trend of, in the South, 

i, 94. 

Engineering, A Note on Scientific, i, 92. 
Engineering Society, i, 103. 

English Association, i, 104. 

Faust, i, 32. 

Feast of the Babe, For the, ii, 79. 
Foreword, i, 4. 

Fountain, The, iii, 20. 

Gate of Fire, The, ii, 90. 

Geography, Department of, i, 99. 

Hampshire Rivers, Our, ii, 41. 

Hampshire Song, A, i, 21. 

Hardy, Thomas, i, 15. 

Hardy, Thomas, An Address, i, 16. 
Hardy, Thomas, A Note on the Philo¬ 
sophy of, i, 29. 

Hardy, Thomas, The Early Life of, 

ii, 103. 

Hardy, Thomas, and George Meredith, 
ii, 87. 

Hardy, Thomas, at Max Gate, i, 45. 
Hardy, Homage to, i, 62, 63. 

Hardy, Thomas, The Wessex of, i, 65. 
Hardy, Thomas, To Commemorate, i, 28. 
Hartleyans, Society of Old, i, 105. 


Has Science made us Happier? iii, 16. 
Herbert, George, ii, 80. 

. Highfield Hall, The New, iii, 6. 

Hill, Alex, In Memoriam, ii, 46. 

Hobbes, Thomas, of Malmesbury, ii, 26. 
Horrocks, John Wesley, iii, 94. 

Historical Association, i, 102. 

Housing, Local Variations in Density of, 

ii, 92. 

House of the Valley Scholars, The, iii, 12. 
Hudson in Hampshire, With, iii, 61. 

I felt the Vacancy of His Presence, i, 55. 
Industrial Town, The, i, 52. 

Invocation, ii, 17. 

Kingdom of Heaven, The, iii, 14. 

Lecture and its Sequel, A, i, 27. 

Looking Backward and Forward, i, 12. 

Microscopy, The Teaching of, i, 97. 

Nel Mezzo Del Cammin, i, 12. 

Outcast Spirits, i, 30. 

Pilgrim Fathers, The, in Southampton, 

iii, 38. 

Pessimist Poet, Sonnet to a, i, 47. 

Physics, Research in, 1927-1928, i, 98. 
Poetry, A Lecture, ii, 9. 

Posts Held by Former Students, i, 109. 
Publications by the Staff of University 
College, Southampton, List of, i, 88. 

Quaestio, iii, 104. 

Rider drowned at Sea, To a, i, 82. 

Record Society, Southampton, i, 102. 
Revenante, La, ii, 25. 

Sad Princess, The, i, 39. 

Sailing Ship, The, i, 45. 

St. Cross Hospital, Winchester, ii, 23. 
Science, Natural, in the Secondary 
School, iii, 21. 

Seagull, The, ii, 78. 

Shakespeare’s Clowns, ii, 61. 
Shakespearean Tragedy, Quiet Ending 
to, i, 41. 

Sidhe, The, iii, 27. 




INDEX. 


TITLES— coni. 

Silchester, iii, 60. Verses, i, 99. 

Solvitur Acris Hiems, ii, 100. 

Southampton, Some Aspects of its Growth Wessex, i, 47. 


and Prosperity, ui, 28. 

Speculum Rehgionis, ii, 101; iii, 109. 

S.O.H. Players, i, 106. 

Sound Waves from a Big Gun, i, 53. 

Sonnet Competition, iii, 103. 

Strange Visit, A, iii, 65. 

Students’ Union, i, 107; ii, 98; iii, 106. 

Summer Thanksgiving, A, ii, 34. 

Topical, i, 23. 

Tramp, The, ii, 45. 

Tree of Life, The, ii, 105. 

Umbrarum Sonitus, i, 26. 

University College, Southampton, A 
Survey, 1928-1929, ii, 1; 1929-1930, 
iii, 1. 

University Hall of Residence, The First, 
ii, 9. 

University, The Idea of, i, 8. 


Wessex, An Economic and Social Survey 
of, ii, 42. 

Wessex Churchyard, A, ii, 86. 

Wessex Heath, On a, ii, 97. 

Wessex of Thomas Hardy, The, i, 65. 

Wessex Poetry Competition, i, 110; 

ii, 108. 

Westminster Abbey, In, i, 7. 

White Bird, The, ii, 108. 

Winchester, Ancient Usages of the City 
of, ii, 35. 

Winchester and the Reading of Books, 
iii, 58. 

Wisdom of the World, The, i, 5. 

Words, iii, 104. 

Write me a Sonnet, iii, 103. 

Wykeham, William of, The Statutes of 
ii, 51. 


IUUUSTRATIONS. 

Birthplace of Thomas Hardy, The, from a Water Colour by Alfred H. Hart. Facing 
i, 65. 

Corfe Castle, from an etching by J. G. Withycombe. Facing ii, 79. 

Hardy, Thomas, Reproduction of Signed Photograph presented to University College, 
Southampton. Frontispiece to First Number. 

H.R.H. The Duchess of York, aPortrait, from a Photograph by Bertram Park. Frontis¬ 
piece to Third Number. 

Montefiore, Claude, G., Reproduction of Signed Portrait. Frontispiece to Second 
Number. 

Seal of Winchester College and the Founder’s Crozier, ii, 52. 

Views of the New Highfield Hall (Photographs by F. W. Anderson; Drawing by 
H. W. Uawton). Facing iii, 6. 

Views of Old Southampton, after drawings by Bernard C. Gotch, iii, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44